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This working paper gives an overview of the national policies that exist in the field of ICT and initial teacher education. Information on this topic was initially gathered via a survey, in the form of a country questionnaire, which was conducted as part of the analytical strand of the OECD study entitled "ICT and Initial Teacher Education". In addition, desk research was conducted for 31 OECD countries. This work has been carried out under the auspices of the New Millenium Learners project of CERI.

Responses to the survey were received from the following countries: Austria, Australia, Belgium (Flanders), Chile, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Some of the responses have been used in this report (see Appendix 1, “Country Questionnaire”). In addition, desk research was conducted for 31 OECD countries. Special attention was given to the dates and to the last revisions of the documents in order to ensure the relevance of the information collected.  Official country reports, work plans, official texts (decrees, laws) and articles constitute the main material of this study. Multiple sources have been used: databases, official government websites, key stakeholders (see References).

The review was completed in January 2009; therefore, reforms and updates of the policies implemented after January 2009 have not been taken into account. On the basis of these documents, three categories are proposed for understanding the extent to which countries have addressed the issue of ICT and initial teacher education:

• Category 1: Lack of relevant information concerning ICT and initial teacher education.
• Category 2: Developing awareness of the stakes of ICT and initial teacher education.
• Category 3: Inclusion of ICT in initial teacher education at several levels.

The first part of this report presents a comparison of national policies by classifying each of them in one of these three categories. The second part of this report proposes a complementary analysis of these result by first discussing some limits to the initial broad classification of countries in these categories and then presenting key elements of comparison in order to estimate the level of coherence of these policies.

This working paper was written by Caroline Rizza from the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Belgium.

Read the full working paper for free on the  OECDiLibrary