The digital silver lining of the pandemic: The impact on preservice teachers' technological knowledge and beliefs.

COVID-19 drastically disrupted teaching and learning worldwide and across all educational levels. Technology took on a central role in redefining education under these exceptional circumstances and frequently revealed challenges related to both infrastructure and to teachers' and learners' technological skills and readiness. This study aimed to investigate whether the experience of emergency remote education significantly impacted preservice teachers' knowledge and beliefs for their future teaching with technology. We investigated three cohorts of preservice teachers (pre-lockdown, n = 179; during lockdown, n = 48; post-lockdown, n = 228) and explored differences in their self-reported technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) and their technological beliefs. Findings showed positive effects in the post-lockdown cohort, reflected in higher levels of technological knowledge (TK) and technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) compared to the pre-lockdown cohort. In addition, unique positive effects on content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) were found in the post-lockdown cohort among preservice teachers with prior teaching experiences. No effects of either cohort or experience emerged for preservice teachers' technological beliefs. These findings indicate that, despite the challenges related to COVID-19 lockdowns, preservice teachers not only appear to have maintained positive beliefs towards technology but may have even been able to draw benefits from the experience of lockdown. These findings and the positive effects associated with teaching experience are discussed with regard to their implication for teacher education.

Teachers' data literacy for learning analytics: a central predictor for digital data use in upper secondary schools.

Since schools increasingly use digital platforms that provide educational data in digital formats, teacher data use, and data literacy have become a focus of educational research. One main challenge is whether teachers use digital data for pedagogical purposes, such as informing their teaching. We conducted a survey study with N = 1059 teachers in upper secondary schools in Switzerland to investigate teacher digital data use and related factors such as the available technologies in schools. Descriptive analysis of the survey responses indicated that although more than half of Swiss upper-secondary teachers agreed with having data technologies at their disposal, only one-third showed a clear tendency to use these technologies, and only one-quarter felt positively confident in improving teaching in this way. An in-depth multilevel modeling showed that teachers' use of digital data could be predicted by differences between schools, teachers' positive beliefs towards digital technologies (will), self-assessed data literacy (skill), and access to data technologies (tool) as well as by general factors such as frequency of using digital devices in lessons by students. Teacher characteristics, such as age and teaching experience, were minor predictors. These results show that the provision of data technologies needs to be supplemented with efforts to strengthen teacher data literacy and use in schools.

Technology acceptance of a mobile portfolio app for teacher education: Pre-service teachers views on multimedia-based note-taking and mentoring in internships.

Mobile technologies are promising tools to scaffold teaching practice. In this study, we developed and tested a mobile app for teacher education. This mobile portfolio enables multimedia-based note-taking, reflection, and discussion with peers and mentors. We conducted two studies to explore the effect of design variants and use scenarios on the app's acceptance. In the first study with N = 83 pre-service primary school teachers, technology acceptance was higher for those using the app with multimedia note-taking functionality than for those using the same app with this functionality disabled. In the second study with N = 81 pre-service teachers, those using the app together with their mentor teachers reported levels of technology acceptance similar to those who used the app exclusively among themselves. In consequence, a mobile portfolio app would be met with higher acceptance if it builds reflection upon multimedia note-taking both with and without the inclusion of mentors.

Academic dishonesty when doing homework: How digital technologies are put to bad use in secondary schools.

The growth in digital technologies in recent decades has offered many opportunities to support students' learning and homework completion. However, it has also contributed to expanding the field of possibilities concerning homework avoidance. Although studies have investigated the factors of academic dishonesty, the focus has often been on college students and formal assessments. The present study aimed to determine what predicts homework avoidance using digital resources and whether engaging in these practices is another predictor of test performance. To address these questions, we analyzed data from the Program for International Student Assessment 2018 survey, which contained additional questionnaires addressing this issue, for the Swiss students. The results showed that about half of the students engaged in one kind or another of digitally-supported practices for homework avoidance at least once or twice a week. Students who were more likely to use digital resources to engage in dishonest practices were males who did not put much effort into their homework and were enrolled in non-higher education-oriented school programs. Further, we found that digitally-supported homework avoidance was a significant negative predictor of test performance when considering information and communication technology predictors. Thus, the present study not only expands the knowledge regarding the predictors of academic dishonesty with digital resources, but also confirms the negative impact of such practices on learning.