The technology integration beliefs and practice of career-change pre-service teachers
There has been a steady rise in the number of professionals choosing to switch occupations to pursue a career in teaching, including those entering alternative teacher recruitment schemes designed to resolve teacher shortages, referred to in this study as career-changers. Research has identified the valuable assets career-changers bring to teaching from lived experiences, applied knowledge from prior roles, and other qualities garnered from industry. However, limited studies have identified the specific technology skills career-changers bring from previous occupations. Moreover, there has been minimal investigations to understand what value these technology skills and expertise offer to teaching regarding the fulfilment of technology integration agendas. Thus, the overarching research question guiding this study was: How do career-changers technological integration beliefs and practice evolve during Initial Teacher Education (ITE), and how do environmental factors influence this process?
This thesis by publication adopted a case-study methodology embedded within a sequential explanatory approach to enable a rich exploration of career-changers beliefs and use of technology throughout ITE. Relating to Phase 1 (Chapter 2, Paper 1), a survey was administered to 146 students at the commencement of a post-graduate ITE program at an Australian university to capture participants’ industry-related technology expertise, their initial general technology and technology integration self-efficacy, and other demographic details (such as age, gender, qualifications, prior occupation). Results indicated that explicit technological expertise was dependent upon professional backgrounds, with technology integration beliefs linked to the level and frequency of prior technology experiences.
Phase 2 (Chapters 3-4, Papers 2 and 3) of this study focused on understanding the initial technology integration practice and beliefs of 19 purposefully chosen participants from Phase 1. Semi-structured interviews were conducted after the initial professional experience (PE) placement. Findings from Phase 2 highlighted prior occupations had fostered metacognitive traits that supported career-changers in their attempts to integrate technology during their initial PE placement. Despite the transferability of technology skills career-changers’ brought from industry, initial technology integration practice involved technology implemented to sustain teacher-directed pedagogical principles.
Phase 3 (Chapter 5, Paper 4) occurred at the completion of ITE and the final PE placement and involved another series of semi-structured interviews with the original 17 participants (2 had withdrawn from the course) to capture any changes to technology integration beliefs and practice. Findings from this phase showed that career-changers' adoption of technology tools to support student-centred learning during PE depended upon mentoring and mastery opportunities during coursework units or PE placements.
The summative phase (Chapter 6, Paper 5) implemented a longitudinal cross-case analysis to better understand the variables that influenced how technology integration beliefs and practice developed, using four of the 17 career-changers to illustrate key effects. Analysis from this phase reinforced the value of applied knowledge, workplace experiences, and technology expertise career-changers bring to teaching if provided with the proper support mechanisms. Overall, this thesis highlights the need for effective communication and collaboration between ITE institutions, teacher educators, and supervising teachers to design ITE programs that leverage the incumbent skills of career-changers to facilitate real-world learning opportunities.
