The development of information and communication technologies (ICT) has many fundamental implications for education. The internet and new media have become the primary platform for communication, information gathering, networking, and sharing. It has widened the digital gap between those who have access to information and those who do not. 

The present research examines the transformation of the increasingly saturated and hence opaque information space. To date, there has been limited published research focusing on how student teachers perceive the evolution of the formation of knowledge of the world about which they are expected to educate their future students. With the increasing interconnectedness of the world, the epistemic filter of educators is subjected to new challenges. These challenges force them to critically evaluate knowledge that is fragmented, rapidly changing, overwhelming, and ubiquitous. 

The impact of ICT on peoples understanding of time, place, and identity is examined by Floridi (2014), amongst others. This dynamic transformation of social structures and ideas about the world (Bauman, 2013) is also reflected in the basic ideas as to which skills, knowledge, and competencies its inhabitants must be equipped with (Reich, 2010) in order to develop and take an active role in society. Technology is no longer a passive tool available to specific educational situations or for solving partial problems, but one that fundamentally transforms our ways of thinking about and interacting with the world (Floridi, 2019).   

This transformation needs to be considered in the context of the teaching profession (Falloon, 2020). Technological acceleration has transformed educational methods, expanded the sources of knowledge, connected knowledge globally and across disciplines, and made traditional textbooks obsolete. Already in 2017, Churchill highlights that we need to make fundamental changes in our use of technology in education, from seeing it as only a communication medium and facilitator of information resources, to a significantly more dynamic understanding (2017). Technology, he argues, must become an intellectual partner; we must learn not through technology but with it.    

Learning can no longer be confined to the compartmentalised structure of individual subjects, but must take account of the fact that both knowledge and problems are interconnected and dynamic. Knowledge is not presented to students as absolute for their passive acceptance, for example, from textbooks (Cormier, 2008), but must be constantly evaluated. The research analyses student needs in order to better adjust the curriculum of professional teacher training so as to respond appropriately to the changing information space. 

The process of teacher preparation has to be meaningful and functional, responsive to movements in a socially constructed reality. From these developments, my research distills a theoretical delineation of a new approach to teacher epistemology, based on the theoretical assumptions outlined above, and the accounts of students preparing to enter the teaching profession. If student teachers are not effectively prepared within this new paradigm, this might impact their ability to prepare their students for life in a complex technological reality. 

The presented research brings a qualitative investigation, focused on the social aspects of the technological era, which is characterised by the disintegration of informational space. This disintegration poses new challenges for institutionalised forms of intervention within education, but also for the wider social discourse. 

To reflect on the perception of the transformation of information space among future teachers, the Situational Analysis (SA) method was employed, allowing for examining the phenomenon from different perspectives (Clarke, 2005). SA represents a relatively new method that complements (and in many ways exceeds) the possibilities of Grounded Theory (Strauss, Corbin, 1990), which for several decades has dominated qualitative analyses in social science research. 

The main research question of this study is: How do selected student teachers construct the discursive arena of contemporary information space in light of technological acceleration? This work offers answers to the questions: How and where do student teachers acquire information? What sources do they perceive as relevant? How do they promote information literacy amongst students? Inquiry with student teachers from the Faculty of Education in the Czech Republic was conducted between 2021 and 2022. The research sample consisted of 380 participants who are in the second year of their bachelor's degree in teaching. Students were approached as part of a reflection on their ongoing teaching practice. Research included reflective questionnaire survey followed up with six focus groups. Through the analytical-interpretive part of the SA, the focus was on how student teachers perceive the current information space in the context of their teaching practice. Due to the nature of the data, the chosen SA tools, the Social Worlds Map, and Discursive Arena, were used. These tools allow for the capture of the variability of individual statements, and to illustrate the relationships between them. The findings of this study are based on the students' conception of their world as dynamic. Data shows that information literacy is a fundamental competence for student teachers (together with tool literacy), which is an elementary prerequisite for the learning process itself—learning as a dynamic, individually, and socially structured way of interpreting the world.

The analysis shows that student teachers are aware of the changes in the information space but have not yet developed strategies to respond to it in their own study preparation. This implies that they are unsure of how to prepare their future students to compete in the information spectacle of empty narratives. Moreover, student teachers reflected that digital space offers constant stimuli that create the illusion of time intensification. For pedagogy, this implies new challenges in designing educational activities that will attract students. I believe that it is necessary to build new strategies and competences so that educational institutions do not lag behind the accelerating reality of the contemporary information space. The results can contribute to a reconfiguration of pedagogical principles taking advantage of an accelerating and increasingly technological access to global information. In other words, expanding good-quality education with innovative strategies of digital world, so student teachers can remain effective in their study, relevant in their concerns, targeted in their choice of topics and research, and continue to develop appropriate skills and habits of mind for their dynamic futures.

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