A comprehensive investigation of TPACK within pre-service teachers’ ICT profiles: Mind the gap!

Abstract

This study aims to identify profiles of pre-service teachers in order to explore their readiness to integrate technology in education. The assumption is that pre-service teacher characteristics such as technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK), go together with the influence of their teacher training. Specifically, this study examines whether pre-service teachers can be clustered on the basis of their TPACK, a typical set of ICT-related characteristics (e.g., general ICT attitudes, attitudes towards ICT in education, ease of use, ICT self-efficacy), and the perceived support at their training institution to adequately integrate ICT in education. Data were collected from a sample of 688 last-year pre-service teachers in 18 teacher training institutions in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). Using correlational and latent profile analysis, the results suggest that: (1) two profiles can be distinguished, (2) TPACK and other individual ICT-related characteristics are positively correlated, and (3) pre-service teachers in a profile with strong TPACK, attitudes, and self-efficacy scores also report high scores on the support they perceive at their teacher training institution. Implications for the role of teacher training institutions are discussed with a specific focus on how to close the gap between the two identified profiles.