Pre-service teachers’ emerging and changing mental models for using learning technologies in teaching and learning : implications for teacher practice

M.Ed.Abstract: Pre-service teachers use cognitive knowledge structures to engage with, to show, to understand and to cooperate with the outside world. Accordingly their prejudices, beliefs, practices, and ethics impact on all aspects of their lives. These cognitive knowledge structures are known as mental schemata or mental models. Prior experience while interacting with technology at home and at school may have an impact on future use of technology. As such, their experiences with technology may determine whether they actually integrate technology in their teaching and learning. This research investigates how existing mental models (experiences from home parents and peers and school from teachers) may influence pre-service teachers’ conceptions of learning when they are confronted with new pedagogies in the integration of ICTs into their own teaching and learning. As such, the research seeks to understand how mental models emerge and change in third year pre-service teachers through engagement with ever-changing educational technology and the implications thereof for teacher training. To fulfil this aim, these objectives need to be met using an interpretive theoretical perspective to investigate the disconnect between existing mental models based on previous experiences of schooling and daily lives and to report on the emerging or changing mental models due to exposure to ICT integration in specialisation areas during an undergraduate module. Data sources, including discussion forum comments, are used to instil views about the use of technology in the 21st century. During pre-service teacher training, a questionnaire was used to illicit views on how they see technology usage after their interaction with it during class in the form of collaboration and authentic lesson activities. To find out how far the activities in this module convinced them to change their mental models, a reflection question was included in their end-of-module portfolio to indicate how they would improve the module for future pre-service teachers. Again, these data sources were analysed using Strauss and Corbin’s content analysis from a TPACK Framework. The TPACK framework was used to identify methods for changing or transforming mental models by looking at the pre-service teachers’ Technological Knowledge (TK), their Content Knowledge (CK), their Pedagogical Knowledge (PK), their Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), their Technological Content Knowledge (TCK), their Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK) and, lastly, their technological pedagogical knowledge content knowledge..