Ecuadorian high school teachers’ perceptions on ICT use in their EFL classes

Abstract

This study focused on investigating Ecuadorian high school teachers’ perceptions on ICT use in their EFL classes has as purpose to analyze and identify the aspects considered by EFL teachers as barriers to use ICT in the classes and the factors that influence them to use ICT. In this research carried out in the Quito city 20 EFL teachers from two public and two private high schools were involved. The data was collected through questionnaires and interviews. Regarding the methodology in this research, a mixed methods approach, quantitative and qualitative, was used. The quantitative method was applied to analyze the data obtained from the questionnaires in a numerical way; and the qualitative method was used to analyze the information attained by the interviews. The results from this study demonstrated that according to teachers’ perceptions the main barriers to use ICT in teaching are the scare to use ICT, hesitation to use ICT for fear of making mistakes, and unfamiliarity with ICT resources; meanwhile, the factors that influence teachers to use ICT are the following: the use of ICT helps to innovate the teaching methodology, ICT motivates students to learn English, and ICT has more advantages than disadvantages.