Abstract:

Developing an updated, critical and well-founded understanding of the pedagogical potential of digital technologies has become a central goal in the initial training of education professionals. However, students entering higher education bring with them a set of experiences and memories that shape their perception of the role of digital technologies in education. Understanding these initial representations is therefore essential for designing training pathways that challenge more traditional views and promote conceptions aligned with principles of pedagogical innovation supported by digital technologies.

This study, carried out within a first-year curricular unit on “ICT in Education” in a Bachelor’s degree in Education Sciences, aims to capture and analyse these representations through drawings produced by students, assuming drawing as a legitimate qualitative source capable of revealing perspectives, expectations and conceptions derived from lived experience.

In the first class, students were invited to draw a learning situation they had experienced during their schooling that, in their view, represented a scenario of pedagogical innovation using digital technologies. The drawings (n = 27) were digitised and analysed based on five analytical dimensions established based on the literature on pedagogical innovation and on technologies as “cognitive tools”: learner-centred approaches; meaningful integration of technologies; methodological diversification; flexibility of learning spaces; and connections across different subject areas of the curriculum.

The exploratory analysis revealed general trends in students’ perceptions: digital technologies are frequently associated with isolated activities (such as quizzes or the use of projectors), embedded in predominantly transmissive and pedagogically undiversified practices. Although some indications of collaborative work emerge, they appear in limited form, restricted to discipline-based logics and rarely grounded in a deeper understanding of pedagogical innovation with digital technologies.

These initial representations, collected from first-year students preparing to become future education professionals, provide a relevant diagnostic and justify ongoing work aimed at fostering a more critical, creative and sustained understanding of the pedagogical integration of digital technologies. They also reflect educational practices experienced by the students throughout their schooling, often marked by instrumental uses of digital technologies focused on transmission and memorisation of curricular content. This result reinforces the importance of promoting, from the outset of initial teacher education, opportunities that challenge established conceptions, broaden pedagogical repertoires and support the development of more innovative and pedagogically grounded understandings of the educational potential of digital technologies.

Keywords:

Pedagogical innovation, learning with technologies, higher education, student representations, visual methods.