Abstract:

In digitally mediated higher education, decisions regarding which technologies support learning are typically made by instructors. However, involving students in selecting digital tools for their learning may reflect an advanced form of techno-pedagogical competence and promote learner agency. This study examines the extent to which teacher educators enable students to participate in decisions about digital tools used to support learning processes more broadly, including inquiry, collaboration, differentiation, and problem-solving.

The study population comprised 156 teacher educators from five teacher-training colleges in Israel, representing diverse disciplinary fields. Participants completed an online questionnaire designed to capture progressive levels of digital integration, ranging from non-use to active student involvement in tool selection and pedagogical implementation. Item Response Theory (IRT) modeling was employed to estimate educators’ proficiency levels and to explore differences across tool categories and background variables.

Findings indicate that while digital tools are widely used to support learning, meaningful student participation in decisions about these tools remains limited. Lower levels of involvement were particularly evident in contexts associated with personalized learning, differentiation, and higher-order problem-solving. Gender and institutional role were found to significantly predict higher proficiency levels.

These results suggest that engaging students in digital tool decision-making is not merely a technical practice but an expression of pedagogical orientation toward shared responsibility in learning. Strengthening teacher educators’ techno-pedagogical proficiency may therefore be critical for cultivating learner agency and critical thinking across digitally supported learning environments.

Keywords:

Learner agency, teacher educators, digital tool decision-making, techno-pedagogical competence, critical thinking, higher education.