Tracing the use of Communication Technologies in Portuguese Higher Education towards teachers’ professional development

Abstract

Aiming to characterize the way Portuguese Public Higher Education Institutions use Communication Technologies (CTs), the on-going project at University of Aveiro TRACER will apply a national online survey, therefore developing a prior pilot-study undertaken with validation purposes. This paper describes and summarizes part of the work developed within the pilot-survey, which includes a theoretical review outlining the context of CTs use and its impact on teacher training. First results of the pilot-study, which included four institutions, will be used to present institutional perspectives about CT use. The responses cannot be generalized as wide-reaching statements, but they already reveal that higher education institutions are making an effort to bring together policies and practices. Also, there seems to be a common awareness and concern about teacher training in this area, although training main topics and modalities seem to vary significantly. Results show that despite the uneven spread of responses about the existence of a formal political strategy concerning CT, there is an institutional investment (currently and foreseen in a near future) on CTs, namely on teacher training for CTs use.