Abstract:

It is generally acknowledged that pre-service teachers need to be equipped with high-level skills in the deployment of appropriate technologies in the classroom and most institutions approach this challenge by offering specific modules or subjects within teacher qualification courses. For Languages teachers in Australia, this issue is important since internet-based applications can provide a wealth of linguistic and cultural experiences that can greatly enrich languages teaching and learning in schools. Assignments for these types of pre-service courses often include the creation of an e-resource for a specific group of students and the placement of this resource within an appropriate pedagogical or theoretical framework. Instructors’ expectations in these contexts are often coloured by assumptions that most of their students are so-called digital natives. While it is true that most pre-service teachers today were born after 1990 – placing them firmly in a generation that has grown up with computers and the internet – assumptions about the digital literacies of these students and their ability to apply these within strong pedagogical frameworks can prove to be somewhat fragile.

The research that forms the basis of this paper analysed e-resource assignments submitted by a group of 20 pre-service teachers. The criteria for this analysis were based on aspects of interactivity, teacher centredness, alignment with pedagogical frameworks and likely contribution to learning outcomes. These assignments were submitted prior to a four-week practicum in secondary school languages classrooms. The languages taught were Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Korean. A follow up questionnaire was also deployed after the practicum in order to examine the experiences with technology these students had in their schools and to look at the ways in which their views on teaching with technology were impacted upon by this experience. The aim was to better understand the ways in which the pre-service teachers were able to rationalise and accommodate the implications of their practical experiences for the theoretical assumptions they made when creating their assignments.

The findings for this research held a number of interesting surprises. Not the least of these was the impact on the pre-service teachers of the digital literacy practices of the school students they were working with. This aspect proved to hold more importance for them than the modelling of the use of collaborative technologies in the classroom. The main changes in the views of the pre-service students towards their initial assignments were around the issues of practicability, appropriateness of content and a re-evaluation of the integration of the technologies into the learning outcomes of the languages lessons.

Keywords:

Pedagogical frameworks, languages, pre-service teachers.