Digital Generation Pre-Service Teachers as Change Agents: A Paradox

Abstract

In this paper I examine the assumptions or 'cultural models' (Gee, 1992, p. 60) that 70 aspiring Digital Generation pre-service teachers in south-east Queensland have formed about themselves as future teachers. This paper is drawn from a larger study that focused on the cultural models and resulting discourses that these pre-service teachers expressed about the development of their future lives and careers. In this paper, I argue that these pre-service teachers possess conflicting cultural models about both themselves as teaching professionals and as social activists. While they profess to be educational and social change agents they also profess discourses of educational conservatism and social disengagement. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about how faculties of teacher education can best prepare teaching professionals in and for the new millennium. It highlights the need to consider the impact of a new generation of teaching professionals in relation to the success or failure of any proposed educational reform.