Digital Expectancies and Realities: Influences that Shape the Foundations and Practice with Educational Technology of Preservice Teachers

Timothy Strohfeldt

This thesis examines the disconnect between preservice teachers' expected and realised experiences with educational technology. Social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986) informs the characterisation of preservice teachers reading social landscapes and shaping their behaviours to assimilate with school cultures. I categorised preservice teachers by a suite of beliefs and abilities that constitute their Foundations of Practice with Educational Technology (FoPET). Ability and self-efficacy, profiled through technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK), and combined with attitudes around educational technology, synthesised preservice teachers' FoPET and potential agency with educational technology. Preservice teachers' self-efficacy changed in response to their educational experiences, while their attitudes towards educational technology remained resilient, positive, and aspirational. Using FoPET as a benchmark, the investigation explored preservice teachers' observations and engagements with educational technology. FoPET and vicarious reinforcement shaped preservice teachers' perceptions and uses of educational technology in school practicum environments. Human agency provided a framework to explain preservice teacher responses to the social dynamics of practicum, and the arguably underwhelming iterations of educational technology they observed and applied. Perceiving that teachers regarded educational technology (used in schools) to be suitable for didactic practice, preservice teachers felt little need to trial potentially transformative pedagogies. Most used digital technology to manage and occupy students, more than to enhance the quality of students' learning. Human agency shaped preservice teachers' integrations of educational technology in schools. Agency depended on the environment more than preservice teachers' ability and core beliefs. I devised a tiered system to explain preservice teachers' agency during practicum. Preservice teachers began practicum with characteristically cautious restraint, mimicking the observed practices of their supervising teacher. Some became sufficiently secure to progress beyond mimicry, and potentially extended their agency from students to other teachers through reverse-mentoring. The described tiers of agency likely repeat in early and later employment, extending implications from practicum to schools everywhere. Tiers of agency re-envisage the educational technology impasse, with the potential to bridge disconnections between education policy expectations, compliance obligation, research predictions, and actual teaching practice in schools.

Digital Expectancies and Realities: Influences that Shape the Foundations and Practice with Educational Technology of Preservice Teachers

Files and links (1)

Abstract

Details

Metrics