Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2019, 35(6).

Identity and digital equity: Reflections on a university

educational technology course

Katherine McLay, Vicente Chua Reyes Jr

The University of Queensland

This inquiry explored preservice teachers (PSTs) developing learner and professional
identities while participating in a university course that explicitly incorporates the use of
technology into teaching. The paper posits that it is important for initial teacher education to
explicitly engage with the role of technology in these developing identities to minimise the
risk of digital inequity, both for PSTs’ learning and that of their future students. Two central
questions are addressed: How did PSTs make sense of their identities as they took part in an
educational technology course? And what challenges did they encounter in incorporating
technology into their learning experiences? An exploratory case study of a group of tutors
and participating students in an ongoing action research project directed at redesigned
educational technology and innovation course at a higher education institution was
undertaken for this inquiry. By critically interrogating students’ reflexive accounts and focus
group discussions with academics teaching into the course, this inquiry has investigated and
built emerging explanations in relation to identity and digital equity.

Implications for practice or policy:

• Positive learner and professional identities are associated with better outcomes.
• PSTs develop learner and professional identities in ways that are intertwined with their
attitudes towards and experiences with technology.
• PSTs with negative digital learner-teacher identities may first experience digital inequity
at university and subsequently contribute to digital inequity in their own future students
– double jeopardy digital inequity.
• Initial teacher education should explicitly cultivate positive digital learner-teacher
identities in preservice teachers.

Keywords: learner identity, digital equity, digital exclusion, preservice teacher education,
university

Introduction
There is broad scholarly agreement that students with a positive learner identity tend to achieve stronger
academic outcomes and have more positive learning experiences. In the context of preservice teacher (PST)
education, learner identity is intertwined with developing professional identity: PSTs who develop a sense
of themselves as capable teachers become more effective practitioners because of the strong link between
identity and practice (Wenger, 1998). Building on this foundational stance, this paper argues that in the
contemporary Australian educational context, tertiary institutions must deliberately cultivate in PSTs
positive and productive technology-related identities in relation to their capacity to integrate technology
meaningfully into teaching and learning to “expand curriculum learning opportunities for students”
(Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], 2011, p. 11). We deploy the term
technology-related throughout this paper to convey the relational connectedness between technology and
PSTs’ sense of who they are as learners and future teachers. We argue that, without this careful attention to
the identity issues that emerge from teaching and learning about technology, double jeopardy digital
inequity may arise: PSTs who do not have positive learner identities associated with technology use may
not develop a sense of themselves as capable teachers in relation to information communication
technologies (ICTs). As a result, the PST’s own future school students may not experience ICT-supported
learning that develops the technological knowledge, skills and attitudes critical for twenty-first century life
and work.

There is a significant body of scholarly work that conceives learning as a complex and interrelated set of
academic and non-academic processes, including identity development. The relationship between learner
identity, effective approaches to learning, and learning outcomes is similarly well established. A learner’s

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Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2019, 35(6).

sense of self in relation to personal and social factors – including but not limited to age, race, socioeconomic
background and gender – can profoundly affect learning outcomes in the present as well as imagined
possible future life and learning trajectories. In technology-rich educational contexts, learners’ facility with,
access to and attitudes towards digital tools is entangled with these various personal and social factors,
adding another dimension to learner identities and, of interest in this paper, to developing PST professional
identities. PST professional identities emerge alongside and are enmeshed with their sense of themselves
as learners because teacher education involves (professional learning (learning about teaching and learning)
and intra-personal learning (learning about oneself as a teacher and learner) (Jones, 2009). As Dall’Alba
and Barnacle (2007) (see also Dall’Alba & Barnacle, 2005, 2009; Dall’Alba & Bengtsen, 2019) and others
have contended for some time, a narrow focus on intellect (epistemology) in tertiary education fails to
account for the new ways of being (ontology) that develop alongside knowledge and skills. PSTs are thus
not just developing the how and what of teaching but also ways of “thinking, making and acting” (Dall’Alba
& Barnacle, 2007, p. 682) – identities – including in relation to technology.

Our interest in this field developed though praxis as we co-taught a first-year educational technology course
that we had redesigned. We noticed that many of the approximately 300 students enrolled in this course
each year – mainly school leavers or so-called “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001) – expressed anxiety about
and resistance to using digital tools for teaching and learning. When we began to interrogate the data
generated for this research, our impression that the PSTs in the course felt this way was supported not only
by our own reflexive practice but also in the lived experience of other academics teaching into the course
and in the students’ reflections, captured in assessment artefacts. Like many other scholars, we were and
remain sceptical of highly contested and arguably empirically unfounded claims that today’s students are
sophisticated and intuitive native users of technology (e.g., Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008; Helsper &
Eynon, 2010; Henderson, Selwyn, & Aston, 2017; Kennedy, Judd, Dalgarno, & Waycott, 2010). Even so,
when confronted with the reality of our students’ anxiety and resistance, we were surprised – an interesting
point of reflection for us as academics in this field. As we began to dig into existing scholarship, we found
points of alignment. For example, Forkosh-Baruch (2018) argued that despite being expected to incorporate
technology meaningfully into learning experiences, contemporary PSTs “may not be technologically
knowledgeable or exhibit ICT skills as anticipated; they may prove to be poorly prepared to utilize ICT as
students and as future teachers” (p. 416; see also Kumar & Vigil 2011; Lei, 2009).

In this paper, we argue that PST attitudes towards technology for teaching and learning play a role in
shaping their developing learner identities – a sense of who they are as learners at university – and their
developing professional identities as teachers – a sense of the kind of teacher they will be in the future. The
term technology-related captures this relational connectedness between technology and PST’s sense of who
they are as learners and future teachers. We argue that PST technology-related learner and developing
professional identities influence both their capacity and their inclination to integrate technology into
teaching and learning. This raises equity issues, both for PSTs and their future school students – double
jeopardy digital inequity. PSTs who already have positive technology-related learner identities are more
likely to experience success in technology-rich learning settings and more likely to deploy technology in
ways that open up learning opportunities for their own students.

Integrating technology into classroom practice is a fundamental expectation in the contemporary Australian
and global educational landscape. The capacity to use technology to “expand learning opportunities for
students” is embedded in the AITSL (2011, p. 11). ICT capability comprises one of the seven general
capabilities in the Australian Curriculum, and ICTs for teaching and learning are embedded in every
learning area. Given that (a) there is vast scholarship supporting the contention that positive learner identity
is interconnected with effective approaches to learning and learning outcomes; (b) research indicates that
PST’s sense of themselves as capable teachers contributes to their effectiveness as teachers; and (c)
integrating ICTs into teaching and learning is an expected practice, we contend that PST education must
take account of and deliberately cultivate positive digital learner and professional identities. This is critical
both for PSTs’ own learning and practice, as well for their own future students who face the technological
ubiquity of twenty-first century work and life.

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To unpack our contention, we were guided by two research questions:

(1) How did PSTs make sense of their identities as they took part in our redesigned educational
technology course?
(2) What challenges did PSTs encounter in incorporating technology into their learning experiences?

First, we provide a broad overview of the literature in relation to learner identity. While a comprehensive
review of this body of work is beyond the scope of this paper, we locate our own perspectives in relation
to the broader landscape by foregrounding some of the ways that learner identity generally and technology-
related learner identity specifically have been explored. We also explore evolving scholarly understandings
of the so-called “digital divide” from early conceptions of access and lack of access to the more nuanced
terms digital inclusion and digital exclusion. These terms grapple with the equity issues that arise from the
complex interplay of economic, technological and social factors, the latter of which includes developing
learner identities. Building on these foundations, our own reflections as co-designers and co-teachers of a
first-year educational technology course are intertwined with focus group discussions with academics
teaching into the course and interrogation of participant students’ critical self-reflections on the course
experience, captured in assessment task artefacts. Drawing on these data, we consider the implications for
initial teacher education and argue that cultivating positive learner identities for PSTs in relation to
technology teaching and learning is critical to avoid double jeopardy digital inequity: first, for PSTs’ own
experience of learning and developing professionalism in relation to technology; and second, for the
learning of their future school students.

Learner and learning identity(ies)

Over the past four decades, research into classroom practice has made it clear that academic activities such
as reading and writing occur at the same time as and are not easily distinguishable from “social
identification, power relations, interpersonal struggles and other apparently non-academic processes”
(Wortham, 2006, p. 1). While there are different approaches to understanding the relationship between the
academic and non-academic, a sociocultural stance conceives these as a complex interrelationship in which
academic learning and social identification “overlap and partly constitute” one another (Wortham, 2006, p.
1). As such, an individual’s perception of him or herself – sense of identity – in a learning situation impacts
significantly on learning and construction of knowledge (Williams & Burden, 1997).

Despite agreement within the social sciences that identity is a critical element of human learning, it is a
concept that resists a precise and universal meaning (Radovic, Black, Williams, & Salas, 2018), and
scholars define it in a range of ways. For example as a story of the self that gives “unity, purpose and
meaning” to life (McAdams & Olson, 2010, p. 527); as a sense of self (Helms, 1998); as a society of I-
positions (Konopka, Hermans, & Goncalves, 2018); as lived relations within a community of practice (Lave
& Wenger, 1991); and as being recognised by self or others as a certain “kind of person” (Gee, 2001, 2005).
Luehmann (2007) argued that there are some commonalities to these varied approaches, reflecting a view
of learning as an active and socially situated process:

• Identity is socially constituted, that is, one is recognized by self and others as a kind of person
because of the interactions one has with others.
• Identity is constantly being formed and reformed, though the change process for one’s core
identities is long term and labor intensive.
• Identity is considered by most to be multifarious, that is, consisting of a number of interrelated
ways one is recognized as a certain kind of person, participating in social communities.
• Identity is constituted in interpretations and narrations of experiences. (p. 827, emphasis in
original)

In addition to an understanding that academic development and selfhood or becoming are intertwined, there
are also equity and social justice implications for learner identity. The relationship between learner identity
and academic engagement and achievement has been explored in a variety of contexts across all levels of
education. In relation to school students, for example, the concept of mathematical identity/ies – defined as
“socially produced ways[s] of being, enacted and recognised in relation to mathematics learning” (Darragh
& Radovic, 2018, p. 2) – has been deployed to consider why some students have difficulty with the subject

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or how identity markers such as race or gender have a negative impact on engagement (Radovic et al.,
2018). Similarly, research into science education has argued that changes to science pedagogy and content
are needed so that girls can develop learner identities as “people who can do and learn science” (Carlone,
2004, p. 392). In addition to gender, socioeconomic background, race and ethnicity have all been found to
play a role in students’ engagement with science education (Archer et al., 2010). In short, there is a
substantial body of work indicating that “students’ sense of self-identity is a major factor in how they
respond to school subjects” (Archer et al., 2010, p. 617). In the tertiary context, there is similar scholarship
supporting the connection between academic outcomes and approaches to learning and broader social and
psychological factors. For example, Reay, Crozier, and Clayton (2010) focused on the interplay between
learner identity and socioeconomic background. Bliuc, Ellis, Goodyear, and Hendres (2011) found that
students’ social identities – a sense of self derived from identifying with particular social groups – has an
impact on the ways students approach learning and subsequent academic performance. Another area of
interest in the tertiary sector is how the transition to university can disrupt previously secure learner
identities – an “intensely emotional” experience “that can affect students’ self belief and feelings of
competence” (Christie, Tett, Cree, & McCune, 2016, p. 479).

In sum, learners of all ages, in all contexts and across all learning areas with a positive sense of who they
are as learners are more likely to approach learning effectively and achieve better academic outcomes. In
the following sections, focus shifts from these broad understandings of the relationship between various
aspects of learner identity and learning outcomes to consider PSTs specifically and the role played by
technology in their learner identities and developing professional identities.

PSTs and the enmeshment of learner and professional identities

Scholarly interest in the ways that PSTs develop professional identities reflects an understanding that
becoming a teacher involves developing a new identity (Danielwicz, 2001; Goodson & Cole, 1994;
Williams, 2014), which includes values, attitudes and beliefs about learners, education and a philosophy of
teaching. For example, Luehmann (2007) built on the work of Gee (2001) who, like Lasky (2005), defined
teacher identity as “being recognised by self or others as a certain kind of teacher” (p. 827). This goes
beyond practice and includes “professional philosophy, passions, commitments, ways of acting and
interacting, values, and morals” (Luehmann, 2007, p. 828). For PSTs, learner identity and professional
identity are enmeshed and co-constitute one another because teacher education involves learning about
teaching and learning, as well as learning about oneself as a teacher and learner (Jones, 2009). Teacher
identity begins to form during initial teacher education and continues throughout the PST’s career (Forkosh-
Baruch, 2018). Supporting PSTs to develop identities both as learners and teachers can help them make
sense of the seeming disjuncture between coursework and practical experience (Ma & Singer-Gabella,
2011). In the context of research into preservice English teachers, Park (2013) argued that learning involves
not only acquiring knowledge and skills but also “identity work in which learners see themselves as
becoming participants in a field or community” (p. 363). All these understandings reflect the view of
learning as an active and socially situated process, outlined earlier, and also recently foregrounded by
Izadinia (2018).

Izadinia (2018) found that internal factors (e.g., motivation and prior experience) and external factors (e.g.,
university and school mentor teachers, peers, family background) contribute to a PST’s developing learner-
teacher identity. Indeed, modelling by teacher educators is a vital element of PST identity development
(Lee & Jo, 2016). Others see PST identity development as connected to literacy practices, because “the
identities that we construct shape our literacy practices, while our practice helps determine a means for
acting out the identities we assume” (Wise & O’Byrne, 2015, pp. 400–401; see also McCarthey & Moje,
2002; Park, 2013). The enmeshment of identity with literacy practices is interesting when considering
technology-related identity work, taken up in the next section. For PSTs, it is increasingly appreciated that
integrating technology into teaching and learning requires a “positive digital professional identity”
(Forkosh-Baruch, 2018, p. 417).

Learner identities in a digital world

There has been international preoccupation, over the past two decades, with preparing students for a digital
future (e.g., Daggett, 2010, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2016;

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Ribble, 2015). Incorporating the digital into teaching and learning is no longer just accepted, but expected
(Erstad, 2012; OECD, 2015), resulting in widespread and rapid uptake of digital tools in education
(Henderson & Yeow, 2012; Major, Haßler, & Hennessy, 2017). In Australia, for example, the digital
education revolution – a key element of the Australian Labor Party’s 2007 federal election campaign –
aimed to provide all Australian secondary school students with laptop computers (Commonwealth of
Australia, 2009). The ubiquity of technology in schools and universities has opened up a new area of interest
for scholars interested in learner identity. For example, the fluidity afforded by mobile digital devices has
brought the entwinement of social and academic into the spotlight through the increasing visibility of
unstructured forms of and spaces for informal learning such as social media (Sangra, Raffaghelli, & Guitert-
Catasus, 2019). Since the smartphone first emerged in the early 1990s, ICTs have increasingly been
deployed as learning tools in a variety of formal and informal contexts beyond the space-time boundaries
of school or university (Greenhow & Robelia, 2009). This has led to the hybridization of learning, “both in
terms of the medium (digital, on-site) and the type of learning (formal, non-formal, informal)” (Sangrá,
Raffaghelli, & Guitert‐Catasús, 2019, p. 1621, emphasis in original). This new educational context has been
explored by scholars in many ways, including how blended and online approaches to teaching and learning
have led to students developing competing or contradictory online and offline identities (Bullingham &
Vasconcelos, 2013). The ways that learning is increasingly unbounded and occurs across schooled and non-
schooled real and virtual sites is of increasing interest for educational researchers, with many exploring the
“rich and complex learning ecology within which children build a variety of experiences, competencies and
interests” (Rajala, Kumpulainen, Hilppö, Paananen, & Lipponen, 2016, p. 15; see also Sefton-Green &
Erstad, 2013, 2017).

The concept of learning ecology describes “the accessed set of contexts, comprised of configurations of
activities, material resources and relationships, found in co-located physical or virtual spaces that provide
opportunities for learning” (Barron, 2004, p. 6). A learner’s ecology is composed of diverse physical and
virtual settings as well as human and technological experiences and relationships both at and beyond school
(Lai & Gu, 2011). Barron’s (2004) relatively early but important research demonstrates how technological
fluency – which others might call literacy or capital – is achieved across contexts (e.g., private, social,
professional, school, university) and through various resources (hardware, software, human, material),
activities and relationships (human, both with self and others, and non-human). The potential for inequity
as a result of the richness or otherwise of an individual’s learning ecology seems obvious, and the evolving
use of the term digital divide reflects increasingly nuanced understandings of technology-related equity
issues.

In the mid-1990s, the term digital divide was used to describe concerns around unequal access to ICTs
(Mossberger, Tolbert, & Stansbury, 2003) and the consequent disadvantage to people without adequate
access to technology and/or Internet connectivity (e.g., Anderson, 2015). Over time, however, this first
digital divide was criticised for its simplistic “dichotomies of haves and have-nots” (Helsper, 2012, p. 403;
see also Helsper & Reisdorf, 2017). The ‘second digital divide’ (Attewell, 2001) shifted from access to a
more multidimensional approach that took disparities in computer and Internet use into account. This
perspective is reflected in the OECD (2001) definition of the digital divide as “the gap between individuals,
households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regard both to their
opportunities to access information and communication technologies (ICTs) and to their use of the Internet
for a wide variety of activities” (p. 5). However, Ragnedda (2017) contended that this definition still does
not consider “either the influence that pre-existing socio-economic inequalities have on digital inequalities,
or, conversely, how digital inequalities influence the social structure” (p. 14). The third digital divide
therefore reflects researchers’ evolving understanding that there is no single, simple gap, but rather a
“constellation of social, economic and technological issues” (p. 15) – much like a learning ecology. All
these diverse, multifaceted and interwoven social, economic, technological issues, experiences and
relationships contribute to learners’ developing sense of who they are – their learner identities – which are
brought to formal, non-formal and informal learning across a range of real and virtual contexts and impact
on learners’ approaches to learning, learning outcomes, and future personal and professional trajectories:

Differences in accessing and using ICTs, and specifically the Internet, are not merely
technologically or economically contingent, but are also based on different cultural, social,
personal and political capital. That is, such differences not only mirror the social strata, but
also produce different outcomes (in terms of knowledge and life chances) that reinforce the
pre-existing social strata. (Ragnedda, 2017, p. 15)

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To bring this all together, there is a well-developed body of work that underscores the relationship between
learner identity and learning outcomes generally, as well as in relation to digital learner identity specifically,
including blended, online, formal and informal learning contexts. Further, there is longstanding scholarly
agreement that the rise of ICTs – especially the Internet – has advantaged those users with “more
information skills, more resources, and more social and economic capital” (Ragnedda, 2017, p. 15) leading
to new forms of inequality and social segmentation and reinforcing those which already exist. There is a
strong correlation between successful learning outcomes and positive learner identities, which are
influenced by a constellation of issues including gender, race, socioeconomic background, and other forms
of personal and cultural capital such as technological facility as well as values, attitudes and beliefs about
technology. With this background in mind, we turn to an overview of the first-year educational technology
course we co-taught, then demonstrate how our reflexive engagement with this experience, alongside other
data sources, highlight the importance of cultivating positive technology-related learner identities in PSTs.

Background and context of the educational technology course

In 2017, we were tasked with redesigning a large, compulsory first-year course that focused on educational
technology and innovation. To do this, we leveraged the university’s interest in developing active learning
approaches (The University of Queensland, 2017–2018) to increase student engagement and satisfaction.
For this innovation, we adopted five design principles:

• Flipped learning: Face-to-face lectures were replaced with online lectures in three out of every
four weeks.
• Tutors as critical friends: Rather than focusing on teaching how to use specific digital tools,
tutors worked alongside students as they explored technology during the Sandpit tutorials
(discussed shortly) to identify problems, find solutions, and explore possibilities.
• Sandpit – Synergy – Showcase: Tutorials followed this three-wave structure, culminating in the
Showcase tutorial where the groups presented their final, digital product.
• Group assessment: For three of the four assessment tasks, students worked in the same, self-
organised communities of practice (Wenger, 1998).
• Critical reflection: This was formally captured in the individual, final task but also embedded in
the Synergy wave of the tutorials.

These design principles were used as the scaffold to underpin the four core competencies that we aimed to
develop in our students: 21st century skills of curating (Bearden, 2016; Robertson, 2012), collaborating,
creating and critically reflecting (Germaine, Richards, Koeller, & Schubert-Irastorza, 2016) on ICT and its
application to teaching and learning. Students in the 2017 and 2018 iterations of the course were organised
into tutorial groups of approximately 20 students each. Tutors who taught into the re-designed course were
conceived as critical friends and facilitated four waves of a three-step workshop format built around active
learning principles: (a) Sandpit – PSTs “play” and plan a curriculum-based group output; (b) Synergy –
PSTs undertake a dry run of the classroom-based output and receive feedback from their peers and tutor;
and (c) Showcase – PSTs present the final output, refined in response to feedback.

The four waves of the three-step workshop format centred on the challenge of letting the groups of PSTs
prepare a curriculum output with the use of specific ICT platforms that were integrated with the targeted
core competencies. The first wave used Pinterest as a curating tool, the second deployed Prezi as a
collaborative instrument, and for the third students used Powtoon as a creative platform. For each task,
students were required to collaboratively decide on the year level, learning area and one or two specific
content descriptions from the Australian Curriculum their digital output would target. The fourth piece of
assessment was an individual task. PSTs could choose any ICT platform to create a digital narrative which
critically reflected on their experience in the course.

Method
This paper reports on a targeted reflexive case study (Huiru, 2009) which draws on data generated in a
larger, ongoing action research project. As a method, case study is widely deployed in social research
(Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009) to generate insights into contemporary phenomena (e.g., events, problems,

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situations). Case study is adaptable to different kinds of evidence (Huiru, 2009), such as the student-
produced artefacts and reflexive accounts of practice we draw on in this paper. The reflexive case study
method opens up possibilities for less conventional approaches because it applies practice theory to both
data-generation (in our case, students’ critically reflective digital artefacts and tutors’ reflexive accounts)
and to analysis of that data (Rittenhofer, 2015).

The data we draw on for this case study was generated in the first (2017) and second (2018) iterations of
the course under scrutiny. In addition to the imperative of generating and reporting on data in relation to
the overarching action research project, we were experiencing some more immediate institutional pressure
to determine whether this course, which we had been asked to redesign in an effort to improve student
satisfaction, had indeed achieved this goal. It was against the backdrop of this institutional pressure that we
noticed PST anxiety about and resistance to using technology for teaching and learning. As we discovered,
through informal conversations and team meetings with academics teaching into the program, that this
anxiety and resistance appeared to be common across all tutorial groups, our curiosity was piqued, and this
research is the result. This reflexive case study is targeted because it focuses on our desire to understand
the identity issues that arise as PSTs engage with ICT for teaching and learning. As described earlier,
learning involves PSTs’ in developing identities as they) learn about teaching and learning and learn about
themselves as a teacher and learner (Jones, 2009).

Two central questions guided our targeted case study:

(1) How did PSTs make sense of their identities as they took part in our redesigned educational
technology course?
(2) What challenges did PSTs encounter in incorporating technology into their learning
experiences?

Participants

The participants in this case study are the nine academics who taught into the course in 2017 (including the
authors) and students enrolled in the 2018 iteration of the course. All 248 first-year PSTs enrolled in 2018
were invited to participate in this research project. In those instances where specific outputs produced by
the PSTs were used for data analysis (discussed in the following section), explicit consent was sought and
provided. In all, 21 students (aged between 18 and 19 years old), consisting of eight males and 12 females,
from the entire cohort consented to their reflexive accounts being used for this case study. Ethical clearance
was obtained through the overarching action research project, which was part of a university-wide initiative
to increase student satisfaction and engagement using active learning approaches.

Data

The data sources are:

(1) Reflective focus group discussions with nine academics teaching into the course: Three months
after the conclusion of the 2017 iteration of the course, the nine academics teaching into the
course (including the authors) wrote a 500-word narrative detailing our experience as a course
tutor, anchored by the question, What are my personal experiences as a tutor in implementing a
new course that attempted to incorporate technology into teaching and learning? The narratives
were uploaded to Dropbox. We then met for three 2-hour meetings. During these meetings, we
read our narratives aloud and discussed and reflected on one another’s experiences. The
conversations were organic. No one formally led the meetings; rather, we freely explored,
shared, reflected, asked questions and commented on our similar and different experiences. As
we interacted and our experiences and stories became entangled (Davies & Gannon, 2012), some
common themes became apparent. These themes were recorded in minutes kept by the first
author, while all participants contributed comments to the narratives on Dropbox.
(2) Participant students’ critical self-reflections on the course experience: Students’ reflexive
accounts of their experiences in the course were captured in individually developed digital
stories using students’ preferred software (e.g., Powtoon, PowerPoint, iMovie, Prezi). The digital
story was the final assessment task in the 2018 iteration of the course. Students were not
explicitly asked to reflect on their identity. The task required students to critically reflect on their

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learning in the course by considering, for example, issues and challenges associated with
integrating technology into teaching and learning and their own experiences learning with ICT.
Students could also reflect on their learning experiences beyond the course.

Together, these data provide rich, reflexive accounts of academics’ and PSTs’ experiences teaching and
learning with technology. Our interest in how technology plays into PSTs developing learner and
professional identities and how these technology-related learner and professional identities could result in
what we call double jeopardy digital inequity developed through reflexive engagement with these data
sources. The experiential accounts of tutors and PSTs illustrate how teaching and learning with technology
does not simply involve introducing a neutral tool into the process, but requires teachers and learners to
become different kinds of teachers and learners; that is, to take up new ways of being teachers and learners
both in the present and in imagined possible futures. In the following sections, we illustrate how this
complex and tension-filled experience raises the possibility of double-jeopardy digital inequity.

Data analysis

In undertaking this case study, we adopted a reflexive approach to generating and analysing qualitative
data, designed to enable “researchers to be reflexive about how they analyse other people’s accounts of
their lives” (Mauthner & Doucet, 2003, p. 414). As the individuals who co-taught, we were motivated to
understand and appreciate how our PST learners experienced the course. Moreover, this prefatory
investigation is a work in progress of a continued and engaged discussion of digital technology, our shared
experiences of the course and ongoing trends that occur in ICT. We subscribe to Berger’s (2015) working
definition where she argues that “[R]eflexivity is commonly viewed as the process of a continual internal
dialogue and critical self-evaluation of researcher’s positionality as well as active acknowledgement and
explicit recognition that this position may affect the research process and outcome” (p. 220). Thus, as we
interrogate the data that we obtained for this inquiry, we are conscious of our shifting positionality: as
facilitators of skills and knowledge of ICT use in teaching for our PSTs, as well as reflexive practitioners
intent on developing insights into issues and challenges encountered by our PSTs in their learning journey.

For this case study, we identified data that captures the ways in which PSTs’ developing learner and
professional identities are related to and intertwined with technology. In terms of the three 2-hour reflective
focus group discussions with the academics teaching into the course, two of the themes that emerged in situ
as we reflected on and discussed our experiences (Larrivee, 2000) are relevant here:

(1) Competing or shifting identities: During the Sandpit sessions, tutors found their role shifted
constantly and fluidly between being a learner of ICT and a teacher of ICT. Often, as they
worked alongside students as critical friends, tutors needed to exercise judgement about when to
take on a more traditional teacher role to help a student who was floundering or frustrated.
Similarly, tutors observed students taking up teacher identities both in small group and whole
class contexts, coaching their peers and the tutor in some aspect of the technology they had
mastered. Other students simply did not see themselves as technologically adept, and therefore
could not imagine using the technologies the course engaged with as teachers in the future.
However, for many students, this sense of themselves now and into the future shifted over time
as the course progressed.
(2) Discomfort: All tutors experienced discomfort as they engaged with new or unfamiliar
technologies, expressing anxiety around their own lack of expertise and the need to be resilient
to mistakes and overcome problems – both so the lesson was successful and so they were
modelling these skills for students. Tutors also observed their students experiencing discomfort
in a range of ways. Some students yearned for a more traditional and didactic course structure
with a weekly lecture and tutorial rather than a flipped approach, while others would have
preferred to write an essay than develop digital artefacts.

In terms of the students’ digital artefacts, we first reviewed the corpus of data (i.e., digital artefacts produced
by the 21 students who consented their use in this research) to identify statements or utterances that related
to identity. In total, 27 utterances were identified. Of these, 11 were made by female PSTs and 16 by male
PSTs. We then engaged in a reflexive discussion and analysis of these utterances to identify key learnings
that could be gleaned about students’ sense of themselves as learners and future teachers and patterns

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between the students’ reflexive digital artefacts and the tutors’ reflections on their experiences teaching
into the course.

Analysis and discussion

From the reflexive analysis of the data outlined above, we offer two insights: first, that tutors play a
powerful role in influencing and shaping PSTs’ developing learner and professional identities, and second,
that discomfort is a common experience for tutors and students.

The role of tutors

The key role played by course tutors in transforming PST identity as both learners and future practitioners
emerged strongly in both data sets. In particular, students appear to particularly value the ways that tutors
make connections between coursework and classroom practice. These connections appear to be made in
two key ways: first, by actually using the various technologies during tutorials, reflective of Lee and Jo’s
(2016) assertion that modelling by university teachers is critical for PST learning and development; and
second, by making explicit connections to how the technology could be used with school students through
demonstrations, practical examples, and sharing stories from the tutor’s own teaching experience. In these
ways, we suggest that tutors open up new imagined possible ways of deploying technology for teaching
and learning in PSTs’ future classrooms. Tutors are not simply showing PSTs how to use various
technologies; rather, they are supporting PSTs to develop a professional identity as capable future teachers
of and with technology. By integrating digital tools and then actively making connections to practice, PSTs
can imagine themselves doing the same in the future. Of the 27 utterances related to identity, nine reflected
a shift in their sense of their future professional identity in relation to technology during the course. For
example:

Over the weeks I was transformed from a sceptic of the use of ICT in the classroom to being
an appreciator of it and in fact a future user of it. (Female student)

When I first entered [course name], I was convinced the technology could not and did not
correlate with my discipline areas. I have changed those views. (Male student)

I have gained insight into the power of technology in the classroom. (Female student)

Previously, during my school experience, I thought the best way to learn was to listen and
read. (Male student)

These examples capture PSTs in moments of professional identity transformation as they imagine the place
of technology in their future trajectories as practitioners, shifting from sceptical to appreciative, changing
views about technology in the classroom and gaining insights into its potential and power. Further, the
theory-practice divide is a dominant theme in teacher education research, and while practicing
schoolteachers are seen as participating in the lived reality of classroom life, teacher educators tend to be
regarded as “aloof within the ivory tower, espousing ideals and the principles that govern them”
(Smagorinsky, Cook, & Johnson, 2003, p. 1400). It is possible that the cyclical Sandpit – Synergy –
Showcase approach to group assessment, combined with tutors deliberately taking on the role of critical
friend and co-explorer rather than expert, offers one way of bridging this persistent divide. Such role
modelling may contribute to PSTs having positive learning experiences as students and help to cultivate
positive digital professional identities. In so doing, PSTs become more likely to imagine a future trajectory
in which they use technology meaningfully in their own classrooms, thereby impacting positively on their
own future students’ technology-related learning experiences.

Embracing discomfort to avoid double jeopardy digital inequity

As we reflected upon the experiences of PSTs and tutors who were involved in this course, one of the
recurring reflexive points that emerged was the notion of discomfort, particularly in relation to the explicit
use of technology in teaching and learning activities. We are aware of Tsikriktsis’s (2004) definition of ICT
discomfort as “a perceived lack of control over technology and a feeling of being overwhelmed by it” (p.
44). We are also cognisant of the work of Niess (2005), who investigated discomfort experienced by PSTs

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as they attempted to integrate technology into the teaching of mathematics and science subjects. However,
as we continually reflect on the lessons learned from the course, what we encounter is the need to embrace
discomfort as necessary, both to integrate technology into teaching and learning and to develop new ways
of being learners and teachers in relation to technology. In the data generated by participant students’ digital
artefacts, 10 of the 27 utterances related to identity engaged with the notion of discomfort in relation to
technology. For example:

[Technology] can be a frustrating and less effective learning tool. (Male student)

Many teachers are unlikely to use technology in their classrooms, likely due to it being
outside their comfort zone. (Male student)

In the discussions that the teaching team undertook while reflecting on the course, the tutors also expressed
discomfort as they grappled with new ICTs so they could support their students. As we continually reflect
on these tensions and struggles, we have become convinced of the need to clearly foreground how
technology integration into teaching and learning will undoubtedly cause discomfort for PSTs, practitioners
and initial teacher educators. We suggest that a vital phenomenon that higher education institutions as well
as schools must squarely address is negotiating challenges that arise as teachers and learners grapple with
discomfort in relation to technology.

One of the main claims of this inquiry is that failing to develop positive learner identities in our PSTs might
lead to double jeopardy digital inequity. One PST reflected that “previously, due to my school experience,
I thought the best way to learn was to listen and read” (male student). We argue that at the beginning of the
course, this PST, like a number of his peers, already experienced some form of digital inequity; that is, their
lack of positive exposure to technology gave them a view of learning confined to, for example, “listening
and reading”. Further, we contend that this paucity of learner identity experiences with technology – albeit
filled with bouts of discomfort – risks a second wave of digital inequity. As the participant student above
noted, “many teachers are unlikely to use technology in their classrooms, likely due to it being outside their
comfort zone” (male student). This leads to the ultimate digital inequity: that experienced by school
students whose teachers feel incapable, ill-equipped or disinclined to deploy technology to expand learning
opportunities for the young people in their care.

Concluding remarks and insights

Our interest in the relationship between technology and PSTs’ learning and professional identities
germinated during our experience co-teaching a first-year educational technology course. This paper
captures our first engagement with the data with the specific aim of interrogating PSTs’ developing learner
and professional identities in relation to technology. This research focus was stimulated by reflexive
practice and professional conversation around some of the tensions and challenges we observed while
teaching the course. One obvious limitation of our study is that we are at the beginning of our research
journey into what we call double jeopardy digital inequity. This phenomenon became visible to us through
reflexive practice and engagement with data generated as part of a larger action research project. Nuances
such as gender, race, socioeconomic background and connections between students’ developing learner
and professional identities and their learning outcomes need to be explored. For example, while we have
identified the number of male and female participant students for methodological transparency, we have
not interrogated how gendered dynamics may impact on PSTs developing technology-related digital
identities in this inquiry. Our data sample is also small and confined to one course at one institution.
However, these limitations reflect rich possibilities for future research across a range of methodological
approaches. There is literature exploring university students’ learner identities both generally and in relation
to technology, and scholarly engagement with preservice teachers’ professional identity development,
including their attitudes towards technology and the value of PSTs having “positive digital professional
identity” (Forkosh-Baruch, 2018, p. 417). However, we believe this paper offers a novel conceptual
contribution by explicitly considering how PSTs’ digital learner and professional identities may impact on
their experience in initial teacher education in the first instance and subsequently on the learning
experiences of their own future students.

While the PSTs in our course are overwhelmingly school leavers, they are not necessarily technologically
confident or inclined to use technology in the classroom. Nevertheless, as graduates, our students are

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expected to be able to “implement teaching strategies for using ICT to expand curriculum learning
opportunities for students” (AITSL, 2011, p. 11) as well as support school students to develop the ICT-
related outcomes identified in each of the learning areas in the Australian Curriculum. This is no small feat,
especially on an uneven playing field – PSTs have diverse learning ecologies and learner identities, not all
of which support effective approaches to technology-related learning. This paper posits that initial teacher
education should actively support PSTs to develop learning ecologies that enhance PST learning
experiences and outcomes in relation to technology and support PSTs to develop positive digital
professional identities, making it more likely that they will, in turn, deploy technology to enhance their own
students’ learning. Together with deliberate course design, the role modelling of tertiary educators –
including a capacity to embrace discomfort – can support PSTs to develop a sense of themselves as
competent learners and teachers of and with technology. As a result, PSTs are more likely to incorporate
ICTs into their practice for the benefit of their own students.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Lauren Thomasse to the ongoing coding and
interrogation of the data upon which we draw in this paper. This research has been supported by The
University of Queensland through the project Strengthening the gateways: Building pathways to success
through active learning / Active Learning Pathways Project (2017–2018) (grant no. 2017001085).

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Corresponding author: Katherine McLay, k.mclay1@uq.edu.au

Copyright: Articles published in the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) are available
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Please cite as: McLay, K., & Chua Reyes, V. (2019). Identity and digital equity: Reflections on a
university educational technology course. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 35(6), 15–
29. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.5552

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