Teacher education programs in Chile are currently facing a dilemma. While teacher educators are more focused on using technology for teaching, student teachers enrolled in those programs are more familiar with the use of technologies for learning. Mass access to digital technologies is changing the way we learn, triggering autonomous forms of learning that challenge the traditional paradigm based on the simple idea that learning only occurs when someone plays the teacher role. Technology availability and the willingness of younger generations to take advantage of it create many interesting scenarios. In fact, young users of social networks and online entertainment who are also seeking specific disciplinary information include some student teachers (Fisher, Higgins, & Loveless, 2006). Teachers’ knowledge acquisition through the use of digital tools is a continuous process, self-initiated mainly in higher education. This process plays a crucial role in the way new teachers face pedagogical and disciplinary learning through their professional life (Cerda, 2013).

Teacher education programs in Chile historically have emphasized teachers’ professional knowledge acquisition, focusing in the implementation of teaching methods already deemed effective, with less attention to autonomous learning practices using digital technologies. Autonomous learning in education has been historically linked to the concept of self-directed learning. According to Merriam (2001), two major concepts have emerged in adult education: andragogy and self-directed learning. While andragogy focuses on how to teach adults, self-directed learning emphasizes the way adults learn by themselves. Garrison (1997) indicated that self-directed learning is a collaborative constructivist perspective and can be organized in three main elements: self-management, related with control issues; self-monitoring, addressing cognitive and metacognitive issues; and motivation, related to the initiation and maintenance of the task.

Another important element in self-directed learning is the new student teachers’ background and its relationship with technology. Beyond the debates about “digital natives” and “immigrant learners” (Prensky (2001, 2012), about whether young people can multitask, or their ability to perform well with technology beyond gaming or social networks, there is general consensus on one key point: young student teachers are highly connected and they are (probably) more skillful than their teachers at seeking information online, even though they looking for and finding information mainly from “informal” sources (e.g., Wikipedia) rather than the specialized research data bases.

The purpose of this study is to generate a grounded theory model about the underlying process of autonomous acquisition of teacher knowledge (pedagogical and disciplinary) through the use of digital learning technologies. The following research question serves as a starting point: Among Chilean student teachers, what are the underlying components in the process of teacher professional knowledge acquisition when they learn using learning technologies in a self-directed way?

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