This editorial introduces Volume 26, Issue 3 of Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE) and reflects on a pivotal shift in educational technology research and practice. As artificial intelligence, digital platforms, and emerging technologies become increasingly embedded in educational settings, the field is moving beyond questions of access and adoption toward deeper considerations of ethics, equity, context, and human agency. The articles featured in this issue collectively emphasize the critical role of educator judgment, professional knowledge, and contextual awareness in shaping meaningful technology integration. Across diverse disciplinary and international perspectives, authors examine topics including digital literacy, online mathematics instruction, computational thinking, teacher professional development, digital curriculum marketplaces, AI design and ethics, deepfake awareness, video-based professional learning, TPACK development, and equitable technology use. Together, these contributions highlight that technology alone does not transform education; rather, transformative outcomes emerge when educators thoughtfully align technological innovations with pedagogical goals, learner needs, and community values. This issue underscores the importance of human-centered, ethical, and context-responsive approaches to educational technology and calls on researchers, teacher educators, and practitioners to advance technologies that support agency and meaningful learning.
Volume 26 Issue 3 [2026]
Editorials
English/Language Arts Education
“It’s More Than Just Literacies, It’s Also Histories”: How High School Teachers’ Self-Reflexivity Shapes Humanizing Critical Digital Literacy Pedagogies
Digital texts present K-12 educators with challenges and opportunities for engaging students in critical inquiry about sociopolitical issues, especially amid the prevalence of dehumanizing digital discourses on such topics. This comparative qualitative case study examines how two high school teachers (English language development; civics) enacted humanizing critical digital literacy (CDL) pedagogies. The researchers focused on how their standpoints, made visible through their self-reflexivity (SR), informed why and how they selected, interpreted, and taught digital texts, including film and videos, audiobooks, news and social media, and digital compositions related to immigration and other sociopolitical issues. Data included semistructured interviews, focus group data, teacher lesson artifacts, and examples of digital texts and classroom practices. These data were transcribed, coded, and analyzed through theory-informed and emergent qualitative analysis. Findings suggest that, while teachers’ standpoints were highly contextual and tied to their identities, histories, and lived experiences, they informed teachers’ digital text selections and CDL pedagogies in aligned and distinct ways. Teachers’ SR was revealed through (a) justice-engaged standpoints, (b) literacies with histories, and (c) digital texts and tools that foster belonging and community. These cases illustrate how teachers’ SR informs humanizing CDL pedagogies that support students’ sensemaking, historical inquiry, and engagement with social change.
Mathematics Education
Transformational Technology: Improved Learning Opportunities in Online Mathematics Instruction
The sudden shift to online instruction caused by COVID-19 social distancing requirements prompted educators to solve new problems of technology and pedagogy. This study shares the experiences of undergraduate students in an elementary mathematics content course with learning to share visual images of their work in online classes. The authors modified the PICRAT framework (Kimmons et al., 2020) for choosing and evaluating technology in terms of pedagogical concerns and students’ opportunities for collaborative interaction to analyze the data. Spanning a two-course sequence in 2020-2021, two cohorts of students received small document cameras to broaden forms of participation, shifting from the instructor “scribing” as students verbally described their thinking during Course 1 to sharing images of their own work as they described it during Course 2. Findings focus on choosing transformative technology and will be of interest to mathematics and teacher educators concerned with equitable instruction.
Science Education
Teacher Self-Efficacy: The Impact on Computational Thinking-Infused Elementary Science Lessons
In this concurrent triangulation mixed-methods study, we examined the impact of professional development (PD) on teachers’ ability to implement computational thinking-infused elementary science lessons, drawing on Bandura’s four sources of self-efficacy: verbal persuasion, vicarious experiences, mastery experiences, and physiological and affective states. Data sources included the survey Teacher Self-Efficacy for Integrating Computational Thinking in Science, classroom observations, academic year PD attendance, and focus groups. Results showed that while PD sessions influenced teachers’ self-efficacy, the changes were not statistically significant. Teachers’ self-efficacy declined from year to year, with no correlation between attendance of the PD sessions, lesson observations and more. The article highlights how teachers’ self-efficacy changed over time and how attendance at the academic year PD impacted their confidence.
Social Studies Education
“Just Kind of Stuck”: Possibilities and Pitfalls of TeachersPayTeachers and Pinterest in the Elementary Social Studies Classroom
Preservice teachers often turn to platforms on the teacher-to-teacher online marketplace of ideas, such as Pinterest, Instagram, and TeachersPayTeachers, to develop curriculum and find classroom ideas and inspiration. This qualitative case study explored the purposes one elementary preservice student teacher expressed for using these platforms, how she wove materials from Pinterest and TeachersPayTeachers into a 12-lesson social studies unit, and the impact of those materials on curricular coherence. Using theories of boundary crossing and pedagogical design capacity, the author argues that materials from these platforms are appealing to preservice teachers as potential boundary crossing objects, but a lack of pedagogical design capacity can lead to an activity-first mentality that impedes curricular coherence.
Objects to Think With
The Sangala Initiative: Establishing a K–12 Engineering Program for East Africa
Lasting educational change in underresourced regions requires more than a donation of equipment or funding alone. The Sangala Initiative, a project initiated by the National Technology Leadership Society, addresses knowledge bottlenecks in the Global South by building local engineering capacity to better both education and the community, starting with establishing a K–12 engineering program suited to the needs and conditions of East Africa. Students in the program will design and fabricate scientific tools that meet genuine community needs — beginning with a 3D-printed microscope and a locally fabricated weather station — and acquire the expertise to maintain and extend those tools after high school. Anchored by a pilot at Hawthorne-Scribner High School in Uganda’s Mt. Elgon region, the initiative is guided by the principles of authentic purpose and reciprocal innovation. This article documents the program’s goal, structure, and early work and suggests ways member associations can collaborate to extend the model.
Current Research
Editorial: Operationalizing Codesign Toward Ethical Creation of AI Experiences: The AI-X Framework
The recent CITE editorial “Picturing the Theory of GenAI: Frameworks for Teaching and Learning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” (Cherner et al., 2026) offered a timely synthesis of conceptual frameworks for guiding educators’ use of generative AI (genAI). The contributors emphasized the importance of theory-building as a way to move our field toward more intentional, pedagogically grounded use of genAI. This editorial is a response and proposes an extension to shift the perspective from AI literacy to AI design agency, and from educators as consumers of genAI tools and using existing AI tools in assessments or assignments with students to educators as creators of AI-driven learning experiences (AI-X). Emerging “vibe coding” and low-code tools now enable educators to design and share their own AI-mediated applications. This shift from consuming to creating AI-X raises new pedagogical, ethical, and societal challenges that have not been fully addressed by existing frameworks. This shift changes the stakes and introduces new layers of responsibility around ethics, pedagogy, and impact: What supports do creators need to design ethical, learner-centered AI-X? How can frameworks and tools operationalize those supports? If educators are to become responsible, ethical creators of AI-X, then frameworks must guide design decisions, scaffold evaluation, and surface ethical considerations in the context of creating AI-X.
High School Teachers’ Perspectives on Deepfakes in Student Life: Recommendations for Policy, Practices, and Design
Harmful deepfakes and synthetic media can now be created quickly and easily by everyday users of artificial intelligence (AI), which introduces new opportunities for interpersonal harm and adds complexity to existing school conduct procedures. The authors present findings from a codesign session with nine public high school teachers, in which they discussed the salient issues of harmful deepfakes in schools. During the session, participants cocreated realistic scenarios, identifying when and how deepfakes might emerge in school settings and then used those scenarios to create recommendations for policymakers, education leaders, and AI developers. Teachers’ central recommendation was for teachers, administrators, caregivers and families to have greater access to AI literacy education, particularly around noncurricular AI use. Findings contribute to the emerging discussion of AI literacy and a collective understanding of privacy, consent, and individuals’ rights to their likeness and voice.
State of Literature Regarding Video Cases and Clubs for In-Service Teachers
This systematic literature review examined the use of video cases and clubs for in-service teacher professional learning from 2014-2024. The researchers identified a total of 17 studies, of which nine examined the role of a facilitator during video club/cases professional learning and eight dealt with professional learning led by the participants. The researchers determined video cases can generate teacher discussion and reflection, and the professional learning facilitator plays an important role in the scaffolding of this discussion and reflection. The researchers recommend more studies about the use of video cases/clubs tied to student outcomes. More studies are also needed that describe the role of the facilitator and ways they can support discussion and reflection that leads to teacher growth. Studies that further examine what types of video are most effective for professional learning are also necessary to understand how different videos promote changes in teacher practice.
Bridging the Digital Use Divide in an Online Simulation: How Contextual Knowledge (XK) Shapes Preservice Teachers’ Technology Integration Decisions
Despite increased technology access across US schools and communities, minoritized students disproportionately use technology for lower level, teacher-driven tasks compared to their more privileged peers. To address this digital use divide, experts have called for preparing preservice teachers (PSTs) to integrate technology more equitably in their instruction. This study examined how 26 PSTs in an asynchronous technology integration course applied contextual knowledge (XK) about their students to design equitable, technology-enhanced lessons in an online simulation. PSTs’ responses from two sessions of the simulation and subsequent debrief activities were analyzed to assess if and how their application of XK evolved from pre- to postcourse. Findings revealed that after learning about the digital use divide’s impact on historically marginalized students, PSTs applied XK in ways that resulted in more equitable lessons. This study highlights the essential role of teacher preparation programs in bridging the digital use divide by cultivating novice teachers’ contextual awareness through an equity lens.
Developing Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Among Chinese Teachers: The Role of Beliefs and Practices
This study examined the development of technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK) among Chinese language teachers in a professional development program. Specifically, the study examined the teachers’ changes in pedagogical beliefs, technological beliefs, student-centered instructional practices, and assessment practices in relationship to TPACK. Findings indicated significant improvements across all domains of TPACK, in both pedagogical and technological beliefs, as well as in the teaching practices. Technological beliefs were significantly associated with posttest TPACK scores, while pedagogical beliefs were significantly correlated with both technological beliefs and TPACK after the program, underscoring their interactive role in TPACK development. Assessment practices were also consistently correlated with TPACK and technological beliefs, whereas student-centered instructional practices showed no significant correlations, possibly due to the short duration of the training. The findings in this study highlight the complex relationship among beliefs and practices to shape TPACK and underscore the importance of professional development that genuinely integrates content, pedagogy, and technology. Future research should focus on the long-term impacts of TPACK on teachers’ classroom practices to identify how changes in teachers’ beliefs and knowledge translate into enacted instruction.