What, why, and for what purpose do teachers use ICT in their teaching practice?These are the key questions explored in this study, particularly in relation to a group of teachers who faced the lockdown period during the COVID-19 pandemic. That exceptional situation highlighted, among other aspects, that the integration of ICT is a complex process that continuously readjusts according to the conditions of practice (Masry-Herzalah & Dor-Haim, 2022).

In normal contexts, studies on this subject have emphasised that the most influential factors in teachers' decision-making regarding the inclusion of technology in their teaching are whether they feel comfortable with the tool, whether they perceive that students will be able to use it, and whether they have confidence in working with it (McCulloch et al., 2018). In fact, an increase in the amount of technology used in classrooms does not seem sufficient to change teachers’ ICT practices unless it is accompanied by a shift in pedagogical practices. A recurring theme in recent research is that the focus should not be solely on whether teachers integrate technology into their practice, but rather on how they do so. As Kjellsdotter (2020) highlights in her study, what may be most relevant is analysing teachers’ professional competencies—specifically their didactic competencies—in relation to ICT, rather than examining other factors to explain whether or not ICT is included in their teaching.

In this regard, and based on the concept of Professional Digital Competence for Teachers, scholars such as Engen (2019) advocate moving away from the notion of digital competence as a set of general knowledge and skills applicable to all situations. Instead, professional digital competence must be directly related to specific uses and contexts. In this way, it becomes evident that the competencies teachers require to use ICT in teaching and learning activities are linked to their ability to translate and reconfigure ICT within different domains and contexts. Digital competence, therefore, is recontextualised and transformed into professional digital competence as teachers incorporate technology into their teaching contexts, aligning it with its pedagogical meaning within a set of interconnected elements: the content they are teaching, the objectives they aim to achieve, the activities or learning situations involving both students and teachers, the management of time in relation to task sequencing, the materials and resources required, and the grouping of students according to planned activities. These factors, moreover, are embedded within specific socio-cultural and curricular contexts (Zaragoza et al., 2023), which often serve as regulatory frameworks for teaching practices (König et al., 2020).

This study investigates how the teachers under examination explain ICT when asked about the aspects they consider in describing their daily work. The technological resources they choose, the reasons behind these choices, and the purposes they serve provide insight into the added value of ICT in their didactic approaches. The focus is, therefore, on the didactic relationships between teachers and ICT. From a didactic perspective, the study seeks to explore the arguments teachers put forward when explaining the type of support ICT provides and the role of these resources in their teaching practice (Engeness, 2020).

The research questions guiding this study are outlined below. However, they collectively contribute to a broader question concerning how teachers integrate digital tools into their classroom practice:

• What are the key characteristics of ICT that teachers highlight when explaining their reasons for incorporating it into their classroom practice?
• How do teachers explain the role of ICT in relation to the other didactic elements involved in their teaching decisions?
• Why and for what purpose do teachers use ICT in their classroom practice?

This study adopts an interpretative phenomenological approach based on in-depth interviews conducted with 47 teachers (89% women) from Early Childhood and Primary Education. The participants had previously collaborated with the research team (in training courses, other research projects, etc.). The primary aim was to explore, describe, and analyse the experiences narrated by the participants (Marshall et al., 2022), reconstructing how they select, adjust, reinterpret, and use digital resources within the context of their teaching practices. An interview protocol was designed, comprising eight open-ended questions, which were grouped into three thematic areas: (1) Reasons for using digital resources in teaching practices, (2) The process of resource selection, and (3) The specific implementation of digital resources in practice. The interview protocol was validated through an inter-rater agreement process and piloted with three individuals from the target population. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, with annotations of non-verbal cues that could aid in interpreting the meaning of participants' explanations. The unit of analysis was the idea, understood as a segment of the narrative that conveys a thought regarding teaching practice, regardless of its length within the account or the number of propositions it contains. Each idea could be coded into different categories within the system. The development of the categorisation system followed a deductive-inductive approach and was structured into three main dimensions, which were further subdivided into categories and subcategories: 1) Digital resources in relation to other elements of teaching practice: This category includes ideas referring to organisational aspects of practice (e.g., routines, student groupings, classroom spaces, teaching sequences) or those linked to curricular design and development (e.g., objectives, activities, content); 2) Conceptions of ICT: This category encompasses teachers’ emotions, thoughts, and opinions regarding the integration of digital resources within their teaching context (e.g., perceiving ICT as a tool, content, competency, individualisation strategy, or societal demand) and 3) Professional learning: This dimension explores the sources teachers rely on for professional development in digital resources, as well as their perceptions and self-assessment of their own digital competence, including how they define it. The categorisation system was structured in a hierarchical, tree-like format, allowing a single idea to be classified under multiple dimensions

Although the research is still ongoing, the preliminary results point in the following directions: - Differential profiles of teachers regarding the integration of digital resources are identified, depending on the subject being taught (e.g., language, mathematics) and the specific student population being worked with: Early Childhood Education, Primary Education, or Students with Special Educational Needs. There is also a group of teachers who, while acknowledging the use of ICT resources, oppose their widespread use and advocate for less screen time within their classrooms. - Teachers put forward various reasons for incorporating digital resources into their practices: ranging from administrative requirements, their social presence, the ease of responding to the diversity of their students, the promotion of motivation for tasks, and, ultimately, reasons closely linked to their professional teaching practice. One of the main reasons for incorporating ICT is that it aids teachers in their professional activities, whether in planning or in producing documents such as report cards, etc. - The use of digital resources as a means of promoting school-family relationships stands out. In this regard, the interviewed teachers explain that these resources provide a fast and effective communication channel with families, serve as a means of providing low-cost or no-cost resources, and offer a way to support studying and revising homework from home. - The use of freely accessible or free digital resources (e.g., Canva, Kahoot, Quizizz, Genially, YouTube, Socrative, etc.) is repeatedly emphasised. The selection of resources is based on their functionality and the extent to which they align with the practices that teachers routinely implement in their classrooms. Teachers indicate that they do not select resources that do not fit their teaching style or those with which they do not feel comfortable.

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