Introduction This study investigated the changes in perspectives of first-year teachers in integrating technology from the beginning of their initial teacher education to the end of their first-year of teaching. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies were employed to collect information from a post-graduate diploma in education cohort. The results showed that the participants’ perceptions toward integrating technology during the coursework increased but were unable to translate their positive perceptions into practice during their practicum and first year of teaching. Hence, it would be useful for teacher educators to work with schools in providing support and professional development to first-year teachers. Literature Review Studies (Strudler & Wetzel, 1999; Willis & Tucker, 2001) suggested beginning teachers are becoming more confident in using technology for personal use (Russell, Bebell, O’Dwyer, & O’Connor, 2003). However, their confidence was not translated into the effective integration of technology into their teaching (Andersson, 2006). They were not using technology in their classroom as creatively, effectively and frequently as expected. Limited studies looked at the beginning teachers’ practices in relationship to their perceptions of integrating technology when they were student teachers. In this study, we identified a cohort of student teachers at the beginning of their initial teacher education programme and investigated their perceptions about integrating technology in their future teaching. Then, we followed them until the end of their first-year of teaching to find out about their actual practices. This study tried to answer three main research questions: 1. What are student teachers’ perceptions about integrating technology before and after their technology course? 2. What are their practices in integrating technology in their teaching practicum and first-year of teaching? 3. What are the changes of their perspectives, if any, in integrating technology from the beginning of the teacher preparation program to the end of their first-year of teaching? Becker, Geer, Hughes, and Strauss (1961) defined perspectives as a coordinated set of ideas and actions someone uses in dealing with problematic situations. For this study, perspectives are defined as the student teachers’ perceptions (ideas) about integrating technology and their actual practices (actions) in teaching. In this paper, we addressed the participants as “student teachers” during their initial teacher education programme and as “beginning teachers” in their first-year of teaching. These two terms are referring to the same group of participants.

Methodology The participants were enrolled in the one-year Post-graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) initial teacher education programme in Singapore. To address the research questions, a 38-item 5-point Likert scale survey was administered in four stages: Stage one: Start of initial teacher education/ pre-technology course; Stage two: Post-technology course; Stage three: Post-teaching practicum/ end of initial teacher education; and Stage four: End of first-year of teaching At the end of the data collection, 89 out of 301 beginning teachers completed all four surveys. Ten purposefully selected participants were invited to participate in the qualitative part of the study, where we interviewed them in-depth at least twice about why they chose/did not choose to integrate technology into their teaching during their first-year of teaching. We also conducted one-week lesson observations with all selected participants.

Factor analysis revealed five main factors related to technology integration from the 38-item survey (Table 1). Cronbach alpha of the instrument was 0.89. When comparing the perceptions and the practices of participants across the four stages, ANOVA on repeated measures showed that significant differences were found in four out of the five factors (Table 1). The general trend showed that their perception means before and after the technology course were higher than their practice means after practicum and first-year teaching. This suggested that the participants perceived that they would integrate technology in their classroom, but they were unable to do so in practice. The results also revealed that they used technology more as classroom management tools, and less for student-centred learning. Qualitative results supported the findings from the survey. Therefore, teacher educators need to help emphasize the value of integrating technology into lessons during initial teacher education and professional development.