Assignment Introduction and Contents
The content of this page was agreed by both authors and the page was written by Alastair Reynolds.

In this assignment the authors have reviewed literature relating to teachers' ICT training needs and the assessment of those needs. Materials which have previously been used and the results from their use have been examined, and a questionnaire suitable for use in secondary schools has been designed. Data has been collected from teachers in two secondary schools and analysed at a number of levels. The conclusions include reflection on the usefulness of the results analysis and the materials produced.

Recently, the Teacher Training Agency set out a National Curriculum for Information and Communications Technology in Initial Teacher Training, describing the ICT competences that new teachers will be expected to have on entry into the profession. In Spring 1999, every school will be given access to a significant amount of funding from the New Opportunities Fund for the provision of training to teachers to improve their use of ICT in teaching.

There are two important areas to consider as this research is designed:

• What methods are appropriate for assessing teachers training needs?
• What knowledge and skills do teachers need to use ICT effectively?

The framework set out in the ICT National Curriculum mentioned above has also been used in the statement of expected outcomes for the New Opportunities Fund initiative. This provides us with some answers to the second question, but other frameworks for teachers’ ICT competence will also be considered.

This assignment was completed collaboratively, so to clarify who was responsible for each web page the appropriate author's name is included at the top of the web page. Some web page content has been produced as a result of discussion between the two authors, and in these cases a transcript of the discussion may be found in the Appendices. The contents list below contains links to all the web pages in the project, as well as links to subsections within those pages.

You can jump to any particular page from the contents page below, but it is most likely that you will wish to begin reading the assignment at Part I or Part II of the literature review.

Links displayed in bold are to individual web pages.
Links in normal type are to subsections of those pages.

Title Page
Introduction and Contents Abstract Background and Introduction Assignment Layout Contents
Literature Review (Part I) Arguments for training teachers in ICT use Official requirements placed on teachers The form ICT training should take Focuses of previous ICT surveys References	Literature Review (Part II) Background Designing a needs assessment Planning a needs assessment Conclusions References
Research Design Overview Questionnaire design Method of analysis Access and ethical considerations
Analysis (Part I) Analysis of a department's training needs Analysis of an individual's training needs Summary	Analysis (Part II) Analysis of a whole school's training needs Summary
Final Conclusions Combined conclusions Personal reflections
References
Appendices