Advancing teacher technology education using open-ended learning environments as research and training platforms

A primary concern of teacher technology education is for pre-service teachers to develop a sophisticated mental model of the affordances of technology that facilitates both teaching and learning with technology. One of the main obstacles to developing the requisite technological pedagogical content knowledge is the inherent challenge faced by teachers in monitoring and controlling certain aspects of their own learning while navigating the web and designing a lesson plan. This paper reviews preliminary findings obtained in our research with nBrowser, an intelligent web browser designed to support pre-service teachers’ self-regulated learning and acquisition of technological pedagogical content knowledge. Case examples of data mining techniques are presented that allow the discovery of knowledge regarding pre-service teachers’ information-seeking and acquisition behaviours and how to support them. The first case illustrates the use of simulated learner experiments, while the second involves the creation of a model to detect learner behaviours. We discuss the implications in terms of design guidelines recommendations for nBrowser as well as the broader impacts for future research on technological pedagogical content knowledge research and development.