Abstract:

The integration of technology in education is making new demands on both current and future teachers. Teachers are expected to use technology themselves as a tool for teaching as well as foster their students’ digital literacy (e.g Graziano, Foulger, Schmidt-Crawford & Slykhuis, 2017; UNESCO, 2011; Voogt & Pareja Roblin, 2010). Teacher educators play an important role in preparing student teachers to effectively integrate technology in their future classrooms (e.g. Agyei & Voogt, 2011; Tondeur et al., 2019). The extent to which teacher educators integrate technology into their curriculum has great impact on student teachers’ use of technology in their future classrooms (Tondeur et al., 2012). As second-order teachers teacher educators have to model effective educational use of technology to their students (Bai & Ertmer, 2008; Garcia & Rose, 2007; Groth, Dunlap & Kidd, 2007) as well as authenticate and explicate the modelled behaviour and substantiate the underlying pedagogical and educational choices (Lunenberg, Dengerink, & Korthagen, 2013). Research suggests that technology use in teacher education is mainly limited to the use of basic and conventional hardware and software and that role models for innovative use of technology are lacking (e.g. Chien, Chang, Yeh, & Chang, 2012; Admiraal, Lockhorst, Smit, & Weijers, 2013; Tondeur et al., 2012).

The demands on teacher educators are also reflected in multiple international frameworks of professional standards (e.g. ISTE, OECD). In recent years research on teacher educators’ competences to teach and learn with technology and to foster student teachers’ digital literacy has been emerging. Research literature identifies four important domains of competence: technology competences, competences for pedagogical and educational technology use, beliefs about teaching and learning and competences in professional learning (Uerz, Kral, & Volman, 2017). Empirical research on how teacher educators actually act as role models for teaching with technology and on how competent they really are in this domain is still scarce.

In our paper we will present the results of an online survey on how teacher educators use technology for their own teaching and act as role models for their students in pre-service education. The online survey was held in the spring of 2018 among 262 teacher educators from the Teacher Education Institute (TEI) of the HAN University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. A total of 101 teacher educators (38.5%) responded.

Using the data of this survey, we will answer the following research questions:
1. How do teacher educators use technology for teaching and learning?
2. How do teacher educators foster student teachers’ digital literacy and prepare them to teach with technology themselves? And:
3. To what extent do teacher educators possess the required competences to do so?

Keywords:

Teacher educators, teaching and learning with technology, technology integration, digital literacy, role model.