Exploring pre-service teachers’ technology-integration belief and scientific inquiry in a teacher-development course

We implemented design practices for a total of 85 pre-service teachers in a teacher-development course. This mixed-method study explored how design practices promoted pre-service teachers’ technology-integration belief and the awareness of scientific-inquiry. In teacher-development courses, the goal of design practices is to enhance pre-service teachers’ awareness and capabilities of design practices and their educational applications. A recent integration between design practices and scientific inquiry in teacher-development courses aims to foster pre-service teachers’ contextual understandings of technology integration in STEM education. Despite the potential impact of design practices on scientific inquiry in teacher training, a challenge remains. Existing studies appear limited to capture in-situ data on how pre-service teachers’ technology-integration belief emerges via design practices. Also, few empirical studies explored how design practices can foster pre-service teachers’ scientific inquiry experiences. Hence, the present study used both text mining and qualitative thematic analysis to uncover how pre-service teachers’ technology-integration beliefs and scientific-inquiry experiences emerged throughout design practices. The result of this study suggests that pre-service teachers enhanced technology-integration beliefs and the awareness of scientific-inquiry via design practices. This study has several implications on design practices in teacher training, as well as the viability of text mining as an alternative assessment to measure design learning experiences.