Purpose The construction of learning scenarios is a way to plan for teaching activities, promoting the development of skills related to problem solving, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity. Using learning scenarios as a lesson planning strategy becomes a powerful tool in initial teacher education. On the one hand, it mobilizes teaching-related scientific concepts, and on the other hand, it offers opportunities to think on innovative pedagogic approaches involving strategies and capacities essential for the future teacher. Research shows that teacher education programs within real school contexts enriched with digital technologies represent an important factor in increasing the quality of teachers’ preparation and their future professional practice. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach The authors present the analysis of practice of design and implementation of learning scenarios in teachers’ initial education courses developed with students of teaching master degrees. Activity theory is used in the analysis of a case study of a student-teacher in Computer Science. Findings The results have been analyzed, contributing to the specification of the principles underlying the learning scenarios in initial teacher education. Research limitations/implications Results show the affordances and possibilities of using learning scenarios as structuring resources for the initial teacher education practice. Originality/value Therefore, the use of learning scenarios brings a set of potentialities to teacher training given its prospective nature.

This study aims to analyze how pre-service informatics teachers design learning scenarios with robotics to teach programming fundamentals and to promote computational thinking skills. A descriptive and exploratory case study design was implemented with 26 pre-service informatics teachers. Data were collected from the participants using qualitative and quantitative instruments. The main results pointed out the affordances and possibilities of the use of learning scenarios with robotics to teach programming fundamentals and to promote computational thinking skills as well as a strong path to promote the application of contents of the other Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) areas. Another significant finding was the impact of the didactic experience on the level of interest and self-confidence of the pre-service teachers in using robotics for teaching purposes. The results showed the importance of these didactics experiences to the pre-service teachers preparation and to apply the pedagogic approaches they have learned in theory in practical activities and to transfer this knowledge to new pedagogical situations and problems.

In the last few years, it has been pointed out that teaching programming is a strong strategy to develop pupils’ competences in computational thinking (CT). In the Portuguese context, the curriculum changes in 2018 made programming and CT compulsory for every pupil in primary and secondary education. Nowadays, there is an information and communication technology (ICT) subject, taught by a computer science teacher in each school grade. In Portugal, to become a computer science teacher in primary and secondary education, it is compulsory to have a master’s degree in computer science education. This article reports on a pedagogical activity developed with student-teachers of a Master in Teaching Informatics at the University of Lisbon. Within the activities of the master’s program, we developed a cross-analysis of the core characteristics of 26 block-based and visual programming applications (apps) used to teach computational thinking and programming in school classes. In order to organize the analysis, a framework with several dimensions was developed and used by student-teachers to register the characteristics of each app. The product of this work is a comparative matrix mapping the core characteristics of each of the 26 apps that student-teachers used to select the most appropriate one for teaching programming and computational thinking according to each grade, age group and other characteristics.

This article aims to challenge and interrogate the concept of integration of digital technology in the curriculum. We set the stage for the discussion taking the no-tion of curriculum and discussing the way teachers take it as a mediating tool and structuring resource for teaching. In the next step we engage in the discussion of learning as transformative participation in school social practices and locate digital technology within that problematic. We then go into the key claim of the article arguing for the myth of integration of digital technology in the curriculum. This provides the background for the formulation of a set of principles that would support the development of a framework for digital technology in education and contextual guidelines. To close we provide examples of topics under-represented in the research that are crucial to support such a framework.