The impact of prior occupations and initial teacher education on post-graduate pre-service teachers’ conceptualization and realization of technology integration

Post-graduate teacher recruitment schemes are designed to fulfil ongoing teaching shortages. However, despite the emphasis of technology integration in educational contexts, little research has examined the knowledge, skills and attitudes post-graduate pre-service teachers bring to teaching from a technology perspective. This paper presents findings from the final phase of an explanatory case study exploring the development of post-graduate pre-service teachers’ technology integration beliefs and practice during a teacher education program at an Australian university. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 post-graduate pre-service teachers after two professional (field) experiences. A social cognitive lens was applied to understand how technology integration beliefs and practice developed during this time. Results showed occupation-specific technology experience provided this group with a diversity of technology expertise, confidence using technology, resilience to overcome technical issues, and self-regulatory traits to learn new technology tools. Contributing personal factors influencing beliefs and practice included age, professional background, technology skills and technology self-efficacy beliefs. Initial practice revealed a predilection to integrate technology to supplement teacher-directed pedagogy. The shift towards technology integration to support student-centred pedagogy was dependent upon modelling and mentoring provisions offered by both teacher-educators and teacher-mentors during professional (field) experience placements. Other extrinsic factors, such as hardware provisions, Information Technology infrastructure, and school culture, were also instrumental in the conceptualization and realization of technology pedagogy. Recommendations include the necessity for post-graduate teacher education programs to recognise the untapped technology expertise this group may bring to teaching, and practical suggestions to support the development of meaningful technology integration epistemologies.