Adopting Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in classrooms is a promising component in the K-12 education sector globally in the 21^st century (Kong et al., 2014). E-learning embraces rapid development and as technologies are upgrading all the time, how preservice teachers (PSTs) respond to new technologies under the context of the changing curriculum, school, culture and society would a key issue for global educators. 

Using advanced tools means a paradigm shift in pedagogy and learning outcomes. PSTs who are receiving the latest teacher training are the youngest generation of the teachers’ team and agents for change. To develop future-proof skills, the aim of ICT integration in the classroom comes with a vision nurturing 21^st Century student learning outcomes (e.g. Framework for 21^st Century Learning by P21, 2016), and Hong Kong is of no exception. The Fourth Strategy on Information Technology in Education (ITE4, by Education Bureau of Hong Kong SAR) highlights the aim of using ICT in schools is for pursuing life-long learning and whole-person development by strengthening students’ “self-directed learning, problem-solving, collaboration and computational thinking competency” (HKEDB, 2015, in Foreword). Do PSTs have the competence to utilize ICT? And are they able to teach 21^st Century skills?

ICT competence means PSTs’ competence and skills in adopting ICT in the classroom. The definition of ICT competence has been developing and there is not yet a consensus. One approach is to measure through the ability to use certain tools (Lei, 2009). Another approach is to highlight either the progressiveness of the learners or differentiation of their ICT skills using levels or categories, with no reference to specific ICTs (Mei, Brown & Teo, 2018). UNESCO’s framework (2011) includes the above mentioned two dimensions that comprise six categories of competencies and three proficiency levels. This international benchmark was adopted as the conceptual framework for measuring the ICT competency of the pre-service teachers.

Using ICT to facilitate language learning is a well-researched area. Research in ICT-enhanced learning has brought impact to English as Second Language (ESL) classroom from the well-researched field of Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (TELL) and Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) towards the emerging research field of Mobile‐Assisted Language Learning (MALL) (Kasemsap, 2017; Chang et al., 2018). With the understanding of the broader picture, a subject-specific tool is needed to understand PSTs’ ICT competencies (Dong & Mertala, 2020). Although Intelligent tutoring system (ITS) is theoretically grounded in MALL, it is a controversial tool that can provoke discussion among pre-service teachers, with mixed findings from meta-analysis (Ma et al., 2014; Steenbergen-Hu & Cooper, 2014) suggesting a debate in its effectiveness.

Pre-service teachers’ readiness towards ICT can be shaped by their teaching practicum in schools. With the guidance and quality assurance from specialists including supervisors from teacher training institutions and mentors from the placement schools, preservice teachers gain confidence by overcoming the problems of teaching through evaluation, criticism and help (Ibrahim, 2017). Teaching practicums can be a source of inspiration for ICT implementation (Dong & Mertala, 2020). There are rich but contradictory findings on PSTs’ ICT competency in teaching practicum (e.g. Guillén-Gámez, Mayorga-Fernández & Álvarez-García, 2018) Albeit research shed some light on preservice teachers’ ICT competency, there is no research examining how practicum has influenced their ICT competency before they graduate from their teacher training programme. And thus, the research questions are as follows.

1)      Does school practicum improve preservice English teachers’ ICT competency?

2)      What shapes PSTs’ ICT competencies in applying innovative educational technologies represented by an ITS prototype?

Mixed method approach was adopted in this study, with an online questionnaire inviting preservice English teachers from Hong Kong universities to participate followed by subsequent in-depth interviews. The choice of using mixed methods was set by the research questions asked, which aimed to understand a broad picture of ICT competence among English PSTs, and through the investigation of an ITS prototype app, explore the factors that shape their readiness and technology use in teacher practicum. There are two sessions in the questionnaire. The first session aims to collect demographic data and the second session aims to understand the e-learning readiness of the preservice English teachers under the comprehensive UNESCO ICT competency framework. An 18-item questionnaire was developed using a 5-point Likert scale format (from “1” to “5”, “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”). For the quantitative phase, this study collected 171 responses in total through the web-based questionnaire. Students from undergraduate degrees in English teacher education programmes of all five universities in Hong Kong were invited, through sending emails to their programme leaders requesting for a mass mail. In terms of qualitative phase, 10 English PSTs were interviewed in Chinese among more than 40 volunteers using typical case purposive sampling. To understand the overall readiness of the population and see how teaching practicum influences their ICT competencies, five interviewees with high scores and five with low scores in the readiness scale were interviewed. To select the participants, participants’ responses (from 1 to 5, for each item) in the questionnaire were added to reflect their overall ICT competency, ranging from 33 to 90 (Mean = 66.06, SD = 9.34). Among the ten interviewees, eight of them have participated in teaching practicum whereas two of them have not. The interview questions were developed based on the UNESCO’s ICT competency framework (2011). As readiness towards educational technology is a broad topic, a specific kind of technology is needed to be used as a representative of innovative technology to ground the discussion. Before the interview, the interviewees were invited to download an ITS prototype app teaching English grammar provided with an instructional manual and were told to prepare a five-minute introduction of the ITS app. The short introduction at the start of the interview served as a warm-up to break the ice and an opening that led to further discussion.

Descriptive data of the quantitative phase revealed that PSTs perceive themselves as competent in ICT in classrooms in six aspects. However, their ICT competency was not significantly improved by teaching practicum except in the sub-scale of “Understanding ICT in Education (Policy)”. From qualitative interviews, it was found that PSTs as digital natives are competent with educational technology, with the belief that educational technologies are useful and easy to use, fitting the highlight of IT-savvy policy in schools’ annual plans as well as development plans. However, their actual usage of educational technology is largely shaped by the school support and colleagues’ practices. To fit in, PSTs need to commit to other colleagues and align with socio-cultural expectations of this new identity group (McGarr & Gavaldon, 2018). In addition, interviewees did not distinguish the use of “self-control”, “self-regulation” or “self-directed” learning, and the mixed usage of the terminologies hints that teachers need more training understanding self-directed learning as a 21st Century skill. PSTs may be very good at motivating students, as they provided many innovative ideas for this ITS, such as the gaming and recommendation systems, but these designs are not enough for assisting students’ self-directed learning. For teacher training institutions, it is worth considering providing the pedagogical training courses towards the 21st Century skills and professors shall be the pioneers of e-learning practice, which were two factors found shaping PSTs’ teaching. Teacher training courses together with professors not only need to introduce the devices but more importantly, illustrate how to utilise the tools most effectively in learning and teaching in the direction of developing students’ self-directed learning, problem-solving, collaboration and computational thinking competencies as the ultimate goals of using ICT in education.

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