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Data gathered from 357 undergraduate and graduate teacher education students were analyzed to assess the ability of the Synthesis of Qualitative Data (SQD) instrument to measure six teaching strategies (role models, reflection, collaboration, feedback, instructional design and authentic experiences) important for preparing future teachers to use technology in their future teaching. Factor analysis, multidimensional scaling, and analysis of variance techniques were applied to the 24 SQD items developed through qualitative assessment of effective strategies needed to prepare teachers, in order to assess reliability and validity for six unique four-item scales. Findings were that all scales exhibited acceptable performance characteristics as independent measures, implying that future studies could use subsets of the items rather than the full 24-item instrument. Recommended areas of future research and practical implications for teacher preparation programs are discussed.

This article focuses on preservice and in-service teachers’ pedagogical reasoning, decision making and action concerning technology integration for learning. We examine this topic in light of three contemporary barriers in policy, practice and research, namely: the lack of an integrative model that considers how teachers come to shape their reasoning and decisions on technology integration, the lack of practical-authentic experience for preservice teachers for technological pedagogical reasoning and decision-making, and the influence of software that automates classroom decisions and may reshape teacher reasoning. We offer three resulting opportunities: the introduction of an integrated epistemic and developmental model that explains how teachers’ pedagogical reasoning and action (PR&A) for technology integration are shaped , teaching approximations of core practices for technology integration, and promoting PR&A and decision-making for simple adaptive Digital Formative Assessment Tools as an overall agenda to enhance policy, practice and research relating to teachers pedagogical reasoning, decision making and action in technology rich contexts. We conclude in proposing implications for policy, practice and research.

The present study is an extension of studies that measure pre-service teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) confidence. It provides new perspectives on pre-service teachers’ TPACK by shifting the focus to concrete concerns and strengths indicated by pre-service teachers. The target group consists of a cohort of first-year pre-service teachers (N = 86) from a Finnish university. The data used in this study were 86 lesson plans with integrated technology written by first-year pre-service teachers, with a specific section where students outlined their confident and challenging areas in the lesson plan. These sections were analysed quantitatively through the theoretical lens of TPACK. Four TPACK areas were found confident, challenging or both confident and challenging for students. For these first-year pre-service teachers, pedagogical knowledge played the most important role, and the outcomes concretize specific aspects of pedagogical knowledge that can be addressed to develop TPACK in teacher education. The results provide important perspectives on pre-service-teachers’ development of TPACK, revealing the important position of pedagogical knowledge and detailed perspectives on how pre-service teachers view their readiness to use ICT in education.

A teacher should arguably know about learning theories (LTs) in order to make daily pedagogical decisions. However, little literature exists on the role of LTs in teacher education. Eight Dutch teacher educators were interviewed on LTs in their curriculum. LTs were unanimously considered important but huge variation was found in what and how LTs are taught. Several functions of LTs were mentioned, with underpinning of pedagogical decisions using LT considered to be the essence of higher education. However, respondents doubted whether this is ever achieved. This suggests an additional paradigm – reality gap in teacher education.

The overall aim of this study was to map the technology integration of pre-service teachers at the start of their initial teacher education program, since beginning teachers indicated that they do not feel fully prepared to integrate technology effectively in the classroom. Attitudes and beliefs towards technology (will), learning experience in technology use (experience), competency of technology use (skill), and access to technology (tool) (expansion of the WST model, Knezek & Christensen, 2008) of 398 pre-service teachers were examined. The results of regression analyses indicated that the WST model explained the variation in pre-service teachers' technology integration (R2 = 0.60). The attitudes and beliefs were found to be the strongest influence and access to technology the weakest. Adding experience to the model (WEST model) did not improve the prediction, although, experience was found to affect technology integration significantly when the measurements were considered as one scale. Concerns about the structure of the WST model were discussed.

This theoretical paper is concerned with conceptualising a major issue that faces all those concerned with and charged with influencing the future of equity in education—the need for digital agency (DA). The paper offers a rationale for this concern, highlights the importance of the concept and its practices, presents the challenges it brings, some current ways in which practices are tackling these challenges, and considers the theoretical foundation for how it might be addressed further in the future. The paper defines DA, and its three component parts—digital competence, digital confidence, and digital accountability. The paper argues that DA is a fundamental requirement for and through education, that it affects all citizens in a global society, and should be enabled through their ongoing and developing digital practices. The paper concludes with recommendations for different educational groups—including policy makers, practitioners, developers, and researchers.

In this study, differences were analysed between two groups of online teachers in a Master of Special Educational Needs program. One group scored high on student satisfaction and the second group received low student satisfaction ratings. Findings indicate that high satisfaction is associated with relatively long and pedagogically complex messages that are most often addressed to the whole group. These messages are characterised by careful listening to the students, elaborate on content knowledge, and show online personality and social behaviour. The research resulted in preliminary guidelines for crafting asynchronous teacher messages that positively affect student satisfaction and a scoring guideline that can be used to score the quality of online teaching as expressed in online asynchronous messages.

This chapter describes the design and outcomes of a graduate course for practicing teachers that aims to develop the quality of technology integration in their educational contexts. The course is rooted in a set of concepts and theories and in three pedagogical principles for enhancing teachers' technology integration. The outcomes of the course were measured by using a mixed methods design. After the course, all students showed satisfactory TPACK scores and most students (83%) produced lessons that showed a good quality of technology integration, and 75% of the lessons showed a rich array of technological affordances. Neither the quality of the technology integration as shown in their lesson design and enactment nor the number of different technological affordances students showed in their (enacted) lesson design were related to students' TPACK scores after the course. This unexpected finding is discussed. Students reported a development from unconscious technology integration to conscious technology integration.