Understanding pre-service teacher learning design practices

The learning design processes that groups of pre-service teachers utilise when creating ICT-based lessons is an uncharted area. This study explored how pre-service teachers approached collaborative design of their ICT-enhanced lessons and the factors that supported and/or inhibited pre-service teacher design decisions. These issues were investigated by examining three groups of student teachers as they completed a collaborative design assignment over a period of five weeks. Data collected included recordings of in-class team design conversations, online resources and discussions, evolving learning designs, and follow-up interview responses. The findings showed that the pre-service teachers adopted three main approaches to designing: top-down, content-focused and learner-focused approaches while they did not focus upon discussing pedagogy and learning context. In addition, group dynamics, teacher-student interaction and the pre-service teachers’ technological capabilities were identified as both enablers and barriers to designing. Implications for design and execution of pre-service teacher learning design projects are discussed with reference to emergent literature. The outcomes of the study add to existing knowledge pertaining to pre-service teacher education, design of technology-based learning and design thinking, which may be of benefit to pre-service teacher educators and pre-service teachers themselves on their learning pathway to becoming good learning designers.