PowerPoint Use in The English Classroom : A study on teacher beliefs and their reported use of PowerPoint in Swedish secondary ESL education

Sammanfattning: PowerPoint is a popular presentation software that is often used in educational settings, however, there is a need for further instruction on how to use the software effectively to facilitate learning. Prior research on the use of PowerPoint in education has been inconclusive as it has been focused on the presence or lack of presence in the classroom, rather than its practical implementation. The current study aims to investigate teachers’ beliefs of using PowerPoint in the classroom, for what purpose they use colors, and image in text in PowerPoint, and to what extent their reported design choices are in line with learning theories related to color, and image and text. To do this, we have interviewed four Swedish ESL teachers and conducted a complimentary survey with 47 ESL teachers. The results show that both survey participants and interviewees considered PowerPoint to be a useful digital tool in the classroom. The survey participants used PowerPoint for language instruction while the interviewees used it for content knowledge. Even if both the survey and interview participants reported practices partially corresponded with current research, it seemed like their design choices were based on instinctive or implicit understanding. With an explicit knowledge of how to design PowerPoint to facilitate learning, teachers could use PowerPoint as a pedagogical tool.