Digital Tools for Meaningful Learning of Preservice Teachers

Introduction

Teacher education programs must incorporate pedagogical innovations to prepare preservice teachers (PTs) for the 21st-century (Aarto-Pesonen & Piirainen, 2020; Avidov-Ungar & Forkosh-Baruch, 2018; Haug & Mork, 2021; Kostiainen et al., 2018). PTs must be provided with the relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities to succeed in the digital age of 21st-century teaching and learning. These abilities include advanced reasoning, critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, content comprehension, and knowledge application in novel contexts (Barak, 2016; Haug & Mork, 2021). The challenge is determining how to best prepare PTs for future K-12 classrooms defined by the ubiquitous use of technology (Cavanaugh et al., 2018; Knezek et al., 2019). However, even more crucially, a generation of “digital natives” that are considered to have grown up in the surroundings of mobile devices, computers, the Internet, and digital media, pose a significant challenge. Even though this generation of students demands contemporary learning environments and digitally networked learning, Bates (2019 advised against presuming that all students are highly “digitally literate” because they differ in their use and familiarity with digital tools.

K-12 education has placed a lot of emphasis on using digital tools globally to promote educational innovations (Cavanaugh et al., 2018; McKnight et al., 2016). Due to this need, teacher education programs are emphasizing on how to adapt and embrace innovative pedagogies to prepare PTs in ways that satisfy curriculum needs and students’ preferred learning styles (Avidov-Ungar & Forkosh-Baruch, 2018; Barak, 2016). Implementing these changes requires teacher educators to re-evaluate their pedagogical practices (Nel, 2017), and be aware of how particular digital tools promote meaningful learning. In the literature, as will be discussed later in this chapter, meaningful learning has been defined in diverse ways. According to Kostiainen et al. (2018), who based their concept of meaningful learning on the cognitive approach, stated that it is a process by which PTs understand newly acquired knowledge and experiences and relate them to prior knowledge.

According to Aarto-Pesonen and Piirainen (2020), meaningful learning experiences are essential for ensuring that students understand what is to be learned. This is a problem in the academic literature, nonetheless, because little research has examined PTs’ meaningful learning experiences (Kostiainen et al., 2018). Kärki et al. (2018) also challenged teacher educators to make a concerted effort to incorporate many of the characteristics of meaningful learning into their instruction. This chapter seeks to contribute to this call by examining how teacher educators are adapting to the 21st-century learning environment to create meaningful learning and prepare PTs for life in advanced modern societies.