There remains the question; however, to what extent teacher education programmes can contribute to shaping more positive beliefs about technology inclusion. To compare the differences between junior (first- and second-year) and senior (third- and fourth-year) EFL teacher education majors’ technology acceptance, Mei (2019) administered a questionnaire study on 204 junior and 91 senior students in the Chinese university context. The questionnaire scales were 1) perceived usefulness, 2) perceived ease of use, 3) subjective norm, 4) CALL [computer assisted language learning] self-efficacy, 5) facilitating conditions, and 6) intentions to use CALL (Mei, 2019). It was found that the only significant difference between the mean values of the scales between juniors and seniors regarded perceived usefulness of technology. Seniors attached significantly higher perceived values to technology inclusion than juniors; thus, according to seniors, technology use held more advantages (Mei, 2019). As perceived usefulness correlated with acceptance, and perceived ease of use correlated with adoption, it is suggested that teacher education programmes promote an early onset of ICT integration to provide enough practice opportunities in order that even junior learners find it easy and useful to use technology (Mei, 2019). Echoing earlier findings suggesting that the TPACK training of prospective teachers should be started early on (Mei et al., 2017), it could be concluded that experiencing ease of use and usefulness would trigger higher acceptance of technology among prospective teachers if facilitated from the beginning of studies.

To investigate the complex relationship between pre-service EFL teachers’ beliefs about ICT integration, language learning and pedagogy, Inayati and Emaliana (2017) applied structural equation modelling. The study involved 103 participants from the Indonesian pre-service EFL teacher education context. The researchers hypothesised that there exists a strong correlation between beliefs about ICT integration and beliefs about language learning and pedagogical beliefs. It was also speculated that pedagogical beliefs correlated with language learning. Applying the dataset on the structural model, it was found that language learning beliefs strongly correlated with beliefs about ICT and pedagogical beliefs; however, a weak negative correlation was found between pedagogical beliefs and beliefs about ICT (Inayati & Emaliana, 2017). Arguably, in the Indonesian context, where the teacher is the source of all knowledge and students are not likely to challenge or question their authority, this authoritativeness hindered learners’ beliefs about ICT because the teaching styles they encountered are rather traditional than constructivist (Inayati & Emaliana, 2017). Furthermore, sudden changes and inconsistent use of ICT in the education of the pre-service teachers could also have contributed to this result (Inayati & Emaliana, 2017). A possible direction of development could be bringing teachers’ and learners’ beliefs about ICT integration in the educational processes, along with reconsidering the traditional roles of teachers towards constructivist pedagogies.

However, not all teacher education programmes (can) offer technological training as part of teaching methodology classes. To explore the readiness of pre-service EFL teachers of technology inclusive language learning and teaching at a Hong Kong university which offered general (transversal) and optional courses on educational technology, Park and Son (2020) used a qualitative approach. This approach was unique because not only did it focus on prospective inclusion, but the participants’ ICT use in their own learning processes. The six participants were in their fourth and fifth years of studies. It was found that all participants had some initial technological knowledge, but this knowledge was greatly shaped by personal interests and their school environments, and most of them defined themselves as recreational users of technology before enrolling in the teacher training programme (Park & Son, 2020). During their studies, as the programme lacked a compulsory ICT methodological course, participants took a transversal ICT course, and some of them took one of the two elective ICT seminars with a language development focus. Prospective teacher-participants expressed a general motivation towards learning about technology, and their beliefs about the use of ICT included creating a learner-centred atmosphere, facilitating autonomous learning, and better teacher-learner relationships. The informants mentioned some barriers of inclusion, such as too much invested time, less opportunities to trace learning if ICT is involved in the out-of-class studying of their learners as well as lack of clear school policy. In their first year of teaching, participants heavily relied on their knowledge they had acquired at the university, and they all expressed that they had become moderate or confident educational technology users (Park & Son, 2020). While the effects of the transversal ICT course and the elective courses are traceable in the participants’ ICT inclusive teaching practices, it would be important to offer even more, subject-specific ICT courses (Park & Son, 2020). It would also be advisable to follow-up on the teaching practices of the teachers to see if ICT inclusion remained part of their teaching repertoire (e.g., Tondeur et al., 2016) and to discover how much it stayed informed by the university ICT course as professional development is inevitably encouraged in the fast-changing field of technology.

As the above examples confirm, despite best efforts, it is impossible to successfully change everyone’s beliefs about the necessity of technology inclusion – learners and instructors alike (Hismanoglu, 2012c). Nonetheless, empirical evidence points toward good practices of integration into EFL teacher education programmes. It is argued that integration should: