From Purpose to Practice: Digital Response Systems in Teacher Education
Experiences of teacher educators and teacher students
Time: Fri 2025-09-26 14.00
Location: F3 (Flodis), Lindstedtsvägen 26 & 28, Stockholm
Video link: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/66244539819
Language: English
Subject area: Technology and Learning
Doctoral student: Patricia Diaz , Digitalt lärande
Opponent: Professor Annika Lantz-Andersson, Göteborgs universitet, Göteborg, Sweden
Supervisor: Professor Stefan Hrastinski, Digitalt lärande; Universitets lektor Per Norström, Lärande i Stem
Abstract
The ability to purposefully integrate digital tools into teaching and learning is a key aspect of teachers’ professional digital competence, emphasized in international frameworks and national policy. Yet, integrating these tools into practice remains challenging in teacher education. One category of digital tools are response systems (RSs), widely used to facilitate participation and feedback, but seldom studied in teacher education.
This thesis explores, through cases of RS use with and without AI-generated feedback, how digital tools mediate pedagogical practice and support teacher students’ digital competence in relation to teaching and learning. It addresses the tensions that arise when national policy ambitions, local pedagogical intentions, and institutional conditions are misaligned. Grounded in a qualitative, interpretive design, the thesis draws on interviews, observations, and reflections from four research articles, analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) was adopted to conceptualize RSs as mediating artifacts shaped by tools, rules, roles, and institutional conditions.
The thesis makes three contributions. First, it shows how RSs can function as catalysts for developing digital competence related to teaching and learning, by encouraging participation, supporting formative assessment, and promoting reflection. Second, it highlights how contextual factors influence whether and how such tools are used. Third, it provides practical implications for teacher educators aiming to support teacher students in developing purposeful and theoretically grounded uses of digital tools in their future profession. In doing so, the thesis also highlights tensions emerging when teacher students attempt to use RSs during student teaching. These tensions illustrate how digital competence is shaped by systemic contradictions.
The thesis highlights that expanding teacher students’ professional digital competence in relation to teaching and learning requires aligning pedagogical purpose with teaching practice, institutional support, and critical reflective engagement.