Integrating ICTs into the Zimbabwean secondary school pre-service teachers' curriculum

Abstract

The need for nations to enhance their competitiveness by leveraging the imperatives of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has seen major shifts in teaching and learning strategies employed globally by educators. Research in Zimbabwean education has pointed to a gap in teachers' competence in the use of information communication technologies (ICTs) for teaching. Using the UNESCO ICT competency for teachers and Bernstein's (2000) theory of the pedagogic device we propose a conceptual framework for the pre-service ICT curriculum at four Zimbabwean secondary school teachers' colleges in relation, in particular, to the complexities present in the nexus of the curriculum's architecture, pedagogy, and delivery context. The framework suggests strategies on how this curriculum could address the gap in the teachers' competencies through effective integration of content, knowledge, skills, technology, and pedagogy into the salient contextual aspects of the country's education sector, given the constraining shortage of ICT resources.