Pushing the envelope of technology integration

Introduction The impetus for the work reported in this paper came as the result of an effort to find a way to teach technology integration in a novel teacher education program. Since the key approach to stimulating inquiry within this teacher education program is through sets of cases, it seemed appropriate to pursue a similar approach to inquiring into the integration of information and communication technology (ICT) within the Alberta curriculum. Through a series of funded projects four digital cases were developed and piloted 1 . While it is tempting to simply declare the project a success and move on to other things, our experience with pilot-testing these cases is leading us to look more closely at the experiences of professional students working in an inquiry environment. We state our own prejudice at the outset that we believe inquiry-based learning has much to commend it and therefore should be pursued. However the intricate relationships among subject knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and environment of application that exist within teacher education present a special instance of inquiry-based learning that warrants careful examination. Nowhere is that intricate relationship more evident than within ICT integration. Therefore the experience of trying to teach ICT integration through inquiry learning may well be a special and instructive case of this approach to professional education in general