All aboard or still at check-in? Teacher educators’ use of digital technologies: Lessons from a small island

Teachers are increasingly integrating ICT into formal education (McKnight et al. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 48(3), 194–211, 2016), helping to incorporate technologies in learning and teaching. However, an important expectation relating to ICT integration is that Initial Teacher Educators model their own practice as well as developing digital skills and competencies in pre-service teachers (Haydn 2010; Gudmundsdottir and Hatlevik European Journal of Teacher Education, 41(2), 214–231, 2018). To test these expectations, this paper reports on a convergent mixed methods study that consisted of twelve interviews with Initial Teacher Educators as well as a series of questionnaires that were distributed to four teacher education providers in Ireland and four in Northern Ireland. Findings suggest that, while there are certainly pockets of excellence and some individual models of good practice, it is evident that there is a limited coherent integration of ICT within and across Initial Teacher Education providers, despite efforts to achieve this.