Exploring freshmen preservice teachers' situated knowledge in reflective reports during case-based activities

Many educators and scholars have emphasized situated learning approaches for teacher education, as teachers have been considered to be the most important factor for effective teaching with technology. While web-based cases are used for situated learning in various ways, their effects on preservice teacher learning from situated perspectives still need to be explored. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to verify the effects of web-enhanced, case-based activities as particular situated approaches by exploring how freshmen preservice teachers developed and used situated knowledge about teaching with technology during the course of a semester. The results indicate that preservice teachers developed and used situated knowledge about teaching with technology in terms of conceptual case knowledge (i.e., understandings of content, instructional strategies, students, lesson planning, and computer literacy) and socially shared identities and beliefs (i.e., computer as positive and helpful for learning) during case-based activity (CBA) projects to some extent.