The role of mobile technologies in pre-service foreign language teacher education

Abstract

Pre-service teacher education plays a pivotal role in ensuring that future teachers are prepared to integrate technology effectively to their teaching. One way of improving readiness in future teachers is integrating mobile technologies to discipline-specific teacher education courses. This article presents three case studies drawn from exploratory research carried out in a year-long course that used an ‘experiential approach’ to teacher education. Accordingly, pre-service teachers of foreign languages used iPads to support both learning to teach languages and learning to integrate technology to their teaching. The cases illustrate the complexities of integrating technology to learning to teach. Although situated on a foreign language teacher education context, findings of this article have implications for other sectors as mobile technologies become ubiquitous in classrooms everywhere.