Secondary school teachers’ preferences in the process of individual technology mentoring

Technology mentoring helps to overcome various barriers to ICT integration in education and increases teachers' use of ICT for personal and professional purposes. Technology mentoring could make this improvement possible by providing a flexible environment for teachers in their educational settings. For this reason, one-to-one teacher-mentor matching was designed, and the details of the process were led by the teachers' preferences. In this study, which lasted for two semesters, 54 mentors and 48 teachers were paired based on the mentors' decision whether they preferred to work with language teachers or Mathematics teachers. As for the data of the study, the mentors' weekly logs and their responses to the question on the way of content determination were collected. Analyzing the responses of the mentors, it was seen that teachers were more dominant in the content decision process. Moreover, the analysis of the mentors' weekly logs revealed that teachers asked for help with learning software programs, designing instructional materials, workload support, and technical support, from the most frequently demanded to least one, respectively. Teachers' demands related to program learning constitute almost three-fourths of the total demands. When the teacher was given enough flexibility in their context, it was seen that a teacher-centered process of ICT integration emerged. The study concluded that teachers put forward their knowledge of ICT in solving problems if they had the opportunity to try their ideas. Therefore, it is suggested that teachers should be actively involved in the decision-making process of ICT training content. •This study indicates teachers' preferences for the content of technology mentoring.•Teachers' wishes were the main identity in deciding the content of mentoring.•Teachers mostly wanted to learn programs during the technology mentoring period.•Teachers mostly asked mentors to teach them office applications and multimedia tools.