EFL Teachers’ Perceptions On The Use Of ICT In The Tinghir Province (Morocco)

Abstract

To meet the education challenges of the new millennium, the Moroccan Ministry of Education issued the National Charter for Education in 1999. Its tenth article treats the integration of ICT in the public education system and supports “the acquisition of computing facilities at schools with the promotion of distance education and learning” (Hamdy, 2007, p. 3). In the case of EFL lessons, the possibility of using ICT-based resources and materials would be an asset for the learning process −guided or independent− as well as for the learners’ motivation and communication skills (Aherrahrou and Makhoukh, 2016; Dkhissi, 2014).

As part of a larger observational study, we interviewed forty teachers working in Middle School (9th grade) and Secondary (10th and 11th grades) education in the Tinghir Province (southeastern Morocco). We asked semi-structured questions so that the participants could comment on their own experiences or enter into more details, if appropriate. Our focus was, mainly, on the actual opportunities they had to integrate ICT in the EFL lessons and how easy or difficult it was; the frequency (i.e. whether ICT were used on a daily, weekly or monthly basis); the students’ attitudes towards ICT in classroom environments; and any recommendations they, as active players in the EFL teaching-learning process, could make to improve the current situation.

In this paper, we systematize the answers into sections and expose these teachers’ perceptions and ideas about EFL teaching in the Tinghir Province. The results obtained show that there are two clashing views as to the integration of ICT in the classroom; school infrastructures, the lack of technological devices or of suitable teacher training programs usually support the teachers’ for or against arguments and, besides, justify their suggestions to be able to comply with the national curriculum and guidelines.