4.4.3.1 Guiding Principles of Inclusion. Most participants expressed that technology use in their instructional purposes was always a result of careful consideration. Erika and Richárd said that it is counterproductive to use technology for everything, whenever something can be just as effectively carried out without turning to technology, devices should be left out of the process. Magdolna’s principle was similar, as she put it, “sometimes less is more”. Dóra also emphasised the importance of using technology “based on pedagogical principles”; first the pedagogical reason should be found and then the accompanying delivery method. Éva echoed this view; “the goal is not using ICT devices, but to find the pedagogical reason behind inclusion”, and she added, “[w]e must not teach about outdated technologies in the classrooms” because future teachers can only profit from learning about most recent technologies. Kálmán said that technology use is prompted by its presence in all walks of life, many children use devices for recreational purposes (e.g., playing video games, listening to music) and own smart devices; thus, making use of them in the classroom seems most natural, but entertaining students “should only be a side benefit, [integration] should be helpful for the learners first and entertaining second”.

4.4.3.2 The Necessity of Digital Competences Development. Richárd said that while transversal ICT courses can be a good start to learn about the basics of educational technology, future teachers were most likely to be helped by methodological courses that incorporate digital possibilities. Gábor observed that learners were usually well equipped with digital devices such as smartphones or laptops, but they displayed a lack of technocratic interest, a will to see “how could I discover what the computer is good for”. Magdolna also registered that students tended to lack the basics of digital competences such as source localisation and source evaluation. Magdolna, László and Gábor said that it remained a big problem for learners what to do with digital information, how to understand and transfer it to meet the purposes of the user. According to Dóra, Éva and Richárd, methodology teachers should not only use, but reflectively integrate digital alternatives to contribute to their students’ development of the necessary critical approach towards finding, altering, and using digital possibilities in their classrooms. Éva said, “methodology teachers should incorporate technologies in their seminars, adopt the attitude that these are just as part of a teacher’s repertoire as any other school equipment”.

4.4.3.3 The Pressure of Integration. Some participants also addressed the pressure of ICT integration. Éva, Richárd, Gábor and László agree that requiring instructors and teachers to use educational technologies contributes towards putting too much pressure on them, and results in pedagogically not reasoned inclusion. As László put it, “there is pressure from educational authorities and the media to use ICT devices in teaching, which results in a natural response of rejection and annihilation”. Dóra observed that a Kahoot! and Quizlet craze was in fashion in recent years, and everyone seems to keep using them just for the sake of entertaining learners, whereas as she perceived “even the learners grew very tired of them.” Most participants said that this pressure results in counterproductive use because teaching the material gets subjected to the device as opposed to the pedagogical tool being superior to the delivery method.

 

4.4.3.4 Invested Effort and Self-development. Involving educational technologies meaningfully requires much invested effort on behalf of the instructors. Dóra, Albert, Zsombor and Richárd said that technology use should always be very well-prepared, which should start with establishing the digital environment, e.g., the learning management system or the Google Drive folders. Dóra, Gábor and Zsombor found it very important to teach their learners how to behave in the given online environment, such as where to upload files and what name to give the files so that it becomes clear what they contain. As Dóra said, “it’s not a backpack, it’s not like I throw everything in, and I’ll find it later there somewhere”.

4.4.3.5 Discussion. In the view of the participants, the pedagogical use of ICT devices is a logical consequence of the general popularity of technology. Learners (and as seen earlier, the instructors too) often use technology for recreational purposes and engage in extramural learning (Fajt, 2021; Lajtai, 2020; Lee, 2019; Sundqvist, 2009). Such extramural activities: however, only affect FL learning if it is done with an awareness towards their learning potential, e.g., words and chunks are collected and learnt by the users of technology (Benson, 2013; Lajtai, 2020). The same logic applies to device ownership, albeit the participants have access to digital tools, using them for learning purposes is lagging (Dringó-Horváth & Gonda, 2018; M. Pintér, 2019; Tóth-Mózer, 2014) because a link between the possibility and taking action has to be established first. According to the expert teachers, building this link could take place by continuous, pedagogically driven use of technology, and where technology use is constantly reflected on to avoid over- or misuse.