An overview of initial teacher training and ICTs in the Andean Region

Abstract

The strategy of incorporating information and communication technologies (ICTs) to initial teacher training via educational reforms that seek to “broaden coverage and quality improvement” is a common denominator in the countries of the Andean Region: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. Under this tendency, higher education institutions, as well as institutes of pedagogic formation, respond to political, economic, and social  exigencies by developing and implementing proposals of formation, outreach and in some cases research, as ways of understanding technology and education in a society that requires a given kind of education. In this context, this article presents an analysis of 23 experiences in four of the five countries mentioned which participated in the program “Teacher education and ICTs, an approximation to mapping the Andean Region”, as a part of the project “New teachers, new technologies” by the Unesco. Some of the characteristics and findings of the study are described, thus suggesting the need of deepening in the education/technology relation, bearing in mind the diverse and heterogeneous net of realities in which it happens.