In recent years, an increasing number of schools internationally showed interest in making interactive whiteboards (IWBs) available as an educational tool for teachers and students. In England, the average number of IWBs per school was 18 in 2005. It increased to 22 IWBs per school in 2006 (Kitchen, Finch, & Sinclair, 2007). In Singapore, schools have started to adopt IWBs as a new technology to enhance teaching and learning in the classrooms since 2004. Some schools have started to install a number of IWBs in selected subject specific classrooms, such as the Science rooms or the computer laboratories. Others took on a more holistic approach and made IWBs available in all classrooms. While some studies had been conducted in England and Australia, limited studies related to IWBs have been conducted to look at their use in Singapore.

With its growing popularity, more researchers in the field are discussing the implementation of IWBs in teaching and learning. Smith, Higgins, Wall and Miller (2005) reviewed the literature related to IWBs and concluded that some potential benefits of IWBs for teaching are: flexibility and versatility, multimedia presentation, interactivity and participation in lessons. Some potential challenges are that teachers and students need adequate training and support in order to use IWBs to their full potential, and difficulties in accessing the IWBs in schools. Currently, many published studies have been conducted using primarily anecdotal research or case studies, where a small number of teachers were interviewed or observed. Hence, there is a need to conduct research to collect empirical evidence pertaining to the implementation of IWBs.

Pre-service teachers’ perceptions and attitudes towards the integration of technology in their future teaching have been widely published (Pajares, 1992). Their perceptions and attitudes are strongly related to and can be used as predictors of behaviors. Levy (2002) suggested that teachers who were more confident in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) were more likely to become early adopters of IWBs in their teaching after the initial training. Studies have discussed stand-alone courses or an integrated approach to provide technology-related knowledge and skills to pre-service teachers (Abbott & Faris, 2000; Albee, 2003). These studies suggested that improving their knowledge and skills through teacher education courses could improve their perceptions and attitudes towards integrating technology in their future teaching.

Constructivist learning theory is used as the theoretical framework of this study, which articulates that learning to teach is to bring changes to knowledge, skills, and beliefs to the pre-service teachers, which may occur through teacher education (Brophy, 1991). Constructivism suggests that individuals construct their own knowledge through the interactions of what they already know with the new ideas and activities with which they come in contact during teacher education. This study would like to investigate the changes in pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards IWBs and their intentions to integrate IWBs in their future teaching before and after exploring and learning the technological knowledge and skills related to teaching with IWBs during their ICT course.

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