Teacher Education Institutes face an enormous challenge to prepare their students for teaching in the digital age. Despite the fact that the new generation of teachers is familiar with using technology for private purposes, many of them do not have the basic technology skills needed for becoming competent in using technology for educational purposes (Kumar & Vigil, 2011; Tondeur et al., 2017). In this contribution we present findings from our research in a large teacher education institute in the Netherlands, preparing teachers for primary and lower secondary education. Our research consists of a survey study to provide baseline information about the skills and attitudes of pre-service students towards technology. In addition we conducted focused design studies, small intervention studies, through which we aim to contribute to pre-service teachers professional reasoning about the use of technology for teaching and learning. Theoretical underpinnings underlying these studies can be found in the work of Knezek and Christensen (2016) on factors contributing to technology integration, Tondeur et al. (2012) about effective teaching strategies to prepare pre-service teachers for technology use in their teaching, Hunter (2015) on technological affordances, the TPACK framework (Koehler & Mishra, 2008) and Shulman’s concept of pedagogical reasoning (Shulman, 1987). The findings of the survey study in combination with the design studies show that quite a number of the pre-service teachers tend to overestimate their technology integration skills. In addition a fair number of students shows anxiety towards using technology. As a result the findings of the design studies are mixed. Some students develop their pedagogical reasoning during the intervention, and make explicit use of the affordances of specific technology for their (and their pupils’) learning but other students struggle with the technology itself, which hinders their learning. At ECER we like to discuss these findings as well as possibilities for fine-tuning the interventions.

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