Technology integration coursework and finding meaning in pre-service teachers’ reflective practice

This study seeks to inform teacher preparation programs regarding technology integration by understanding (1) relationships between tasks with specific technologies and pre-service teachers’ critical thinking about technology integration and (2) relationships between how pre-service teachers are critically thinking about technology integration and their self-assessed competence in technology integration. A mixed methods research design was employed, which gathered survey and performance task reflection data from pre-service teachers in four sections of a technology for teaching course. Data were analyzed using a process that categorized pre-service teacher thinking about technology integration in accordance with the replacement, amplification, and transformation model of technology integration. Results revealed that there was a significant overall effect of the selection of performance task upon whether it was applied in a transformative manner, but that no such overall effect existed for amplification and replacement. Examining the data descriptively, pre-service teachers generally exhibited a high level of amplification in how they applied technology in their thinking and rarely referred to technology use that did not show some clear benefits in their classrooms (i.e. replacement). Results also showed that there was no relationship between how students were thinking about technology integration and their self-assessment of technology integration competence. These results suggest that the types of performance tasks we used only had an impact on how pre-service teachers applied their understanding of technology integration in their educational contexts for transformative use cases. We also conclude that pre-service teachers’ self-assessments of competence are likely based upon technical fluency rather than thoughtful application toward classroom outcomes.