Comparison of Croatian Foreign Language Teachers’ General Propensity towards the Use of ICT and Its Impact on the Foreign Language Teaching Process

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Mimi

The paper investigates how information and communication technologies (ICT) influence foreign language (FL) teaching practices. A survey of 255 FL teachers in Croatia covers primary, secondary, and university contexts and multiple target languages. Although most teachers have home/work PCs and Internet access, fewer than half teach in classrooms equipped with computers. Findings confirm a positive, statistically significant relationship between time spent using ICT and teachers’ attitudes toward their own competence for successful ICT application, focusing on self-assessed computer competences and practical experience with ICT tools and software.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

ICT and foreign language teaching context

Teacher education and competence framework

Competences including ICT and multimedia

Comparison of Croatian Foreign Language Teachers’ General Propensity towards the Use of ICT and Its Impact on the Foreign Language Teaching Process By Krunoslav Mikulan􀀍 Vladimir Legac† Predrag Oreski‡ In this paper the authors present some of the results of a research into the influence of information and communication technologies (ICT) on foreign language (FL) teaching. The survey was conducted on a sample of 255 FL teachers (N= 255) in the Republic of Croatia. The teachers are eployed at primary and secondary schools, or at universities, and they teach six different FLs. The vast majority possess a PC at home and/or work, and have access to the Internet, but less than half teach FLs in classrooms equipped with a computer. The starting hypothesis was that the increase of the time teachers spend on their computers and the Internet would lead to the increase in their ICT competences. The results of the study have confirmed the authors’hypothesis: Correlation quotients have shown that there is a positive statistically significant correlation between the amounts of time spent using ICT and the attitudes of FL teachers regarding their own assessment of competence for the successful application of ICT in the FLs teaching. The analysis of the results presented in the paper mainly focus on correlations between the amount of time spent using ICT and the teachers’ self-assessments of their 12 different computer competences and the evaluation of their experience with ICT equipment and software. Keywords: Educational software, e-learning, self-assessment of ICT competences of Croatian foreign language teachers. Introduction The structure of educational methods and the development of new approaches to education and learning in the 21st century have become the basis of the contemporary educational system (Selwyn, 2012; Cartelli, 2012; Laurillard, 2012; Price, 2013; Vasbo & Gudmundsdottir, 2014) . The development of creative and collaborative skills of both teachers and students requires an intense merging of various methods of teaching and learning, as well as the changes in the forms of collaboration between teachers and students (Henry, 2014) . ICT is often viewed as a potential tool for revolutionizing education which can eventually improve the effects of learning (Johansson & 􀀍 Assistant Professor, University of Zagreb, Croatia. † Assistant Professor, University of Zagreb, Croatia. ‡ Assistant Professor, University of Zagreb, Croatia. [https://doi.org/10.30958/aje.4-1-3](https://doi.org/10.30958/aje.4-1-3) doi=10.30958/aje.4-1-3 Gärdenfors 2012, Scaife & Rogers 2012, Underwood 2014), and it can help in creating equal opportunities for attaining education, which can ultimately lead to the transformation of the society as a whole (Kozma, 2011) . With the constant development of new information and communication technologies (ICT), media and new forms of communication, foreign language teachers (FLT) are faced with the problem of becoming acquainted with a variety of devices, applications and software not only because they are used by their students, but also because they could potentially be used in the teaching process. Research into the use of ICT in life and work of teachers has been conducted a number of times (cf. Wu, 2014; Zervas, Chatzistavrianos, & Sampson, 2014; Light and Pierson, 2014; Brigas [et. al](et. al)., 2016); research that would focus on FLT is less common, but the results are similar no matter in which country the research is conducted (Li & Walsh, 2011; Cajkler & Addelman, 2012; Halvorsen, 2016) . The researchers agree that the use of ICTin a FL classroom can help create an interactive and immersive learning environment and an authentic language input, but they also regularly express the need of additional training for FLT and the need for them to embrace new teaching practices connected with the use of ICT in education (Vekiri, 2014; Gretter & Gondra, 2016; Grosbois & Sarré, 2016; Liu, 2016;

FAQs

What does the study examine about ICT in foreign language teaching?

It examines results on how information and communication technologies influence foreign language teaching, especially teachers’ ICT usage and related attitudes toward competence.

How was the research conducted?

A survey was conducted with 255 foreign language teachers across primary, secondary, and university settings in the Republic of Croatia.

What relationship did the study find between ICT use and teachers’ competence?

The results confirm a positive statistically significant correlation between the amount of time teachers spend using ICT and their attitudes about their own competence for applying ICT successfully in FL teaching.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Mimi