By Sara Vogel, Aankit Patel, Aman Yadav for the CITE Initiative
Last update: May 2025
There are a universe of possibilities when it comes to integrating computing and digital literacies into teacher education. But often, technologies themselves wind up driving conversations about tech in education. In those cases, the focus for teacher preparation and professional development narrows to “let’s teach teachers how to use this new gadget.”
But at CITE, we want to support colleges to meaningfully and equitably integrate computing and digital literacies given their specific contexts, goals, and teacher candidates. So we developed a framework.
What is the CITE Framework?
This framework offers teacher educators a way of understanding:
- The driving principles and goals of Computing Integrated Teacher Education
- The components of CITE pedagogy (computing & digital literacies, teacher ed) and how they relate to each other
Guiding Principles
Rather than center particular tools or technologies, our framework starts with the holistic learning and teaching of teacher candidates, guided by the following principles.
- We promote equitable and culturally relevant/sustaining pedagogical practice for teacher candidates and P-12 learners
- We center educators’ journeys as they are today, as well as those journeys that could/might be
Goals of CITE Pedagogy
Guided by those principles, we aim to bring computing and digital literacies together towards a few ends:
- CITE pedagogy should support and enhance the teaching and learning of Teacher Ed Content. In other words, computing and digital literacies integration should help faculty, teacher teacher candidates, and their future P-12 students be better teachers and learners!
- Tech is changing disciplines and education. CITE pedagogy should expand and transform what and how we teach and learn given that fact. There are many new challenges and opportunities that technologies and computing pose and offer. CITE pedagogy should be responsive to those.
- CITE pedagogy should prepare teacher candidates to teach and learn ABOUT, WITH, THROUGH, and AGAINST computing and technology. Teacher candidates and their P-12 learners should be empowered in relation to computing and technology – as communicators about these areas, as users that enhance teaching and learning with them, as creators that express themselves through tools, and as critics and resisters against them.
Defining our Prepositions
What does it mean to teach and learn ABOUT, WITH, THROUGH, and AGAINST computing and technology?
| ABOUT | WITH | THROUGH | AGAINST | |
| For teacher learning | Teachers engage in conversations about technology, digital citizenship, and its impacts (from a user and teacher perspective). | Teachers learn with technology to help them explore concepts for themselves. | Teachers express themselves and their learning through their creation and modification of computational artifacts | Teachers think critically about technologies and computing approaches along a range of criteria related to students, purpose and settings; decide when to use “plugged” vs. “unplugged” methods; dismantle or resist use of unjust tech. |
| To integrate into teachers’ pedagogy | Teachers strategically bring these conversations to their students. | Teachers teach with technology to support student learning and participation. | Teachers prompt their students to express themselves through creation and modification of computational artifacts. | Teachers strategically bring these conversations to their students. |
How do we get there?
CITE aims to support faculty and teacher candidates to apply CITE equity perspectives, and mobilize crosscutting digital and computing practices to achieve those goals across a range of teacher education topics.
Click each area or scroll to learn more!
Teacher Education Topics
Computing and digital literacies are not just relevant in a couple of courses. They have implications for ALL areas of teacher education, including across the following big areas of teacher ed. These areas were inspired by accreditation standards and the work of Linda Darling Hammond (2021).
| Teacher Ed Area | Example CITE implication |
| Learners and Learning | How can educators understand the role of learners’ digital lives in their learning and development? |
| Positive learning and work environments | How might educators leverage assistive technology and other tools to promote accessibility of resources for all learners? |
| Content and Pedagogical Content Knowledge | How might educators leverage digital and computing tools and approaches to support disciplinary content area teaching and learning? |
| Instructional Practices and Assessment | How might computational thinking help educators better use data to inform planning, teaching strategies, materials, technology used? How might educators curate and vet the digital and computational tools that are used in classrooms? Using what criteria? |
| Professional practice | How might educators use digital and computing tools to advocate for learners, equity, and teachers’ professional interests? |
Computing and Digital Literacies (CDLs)
Which computing and digital literacies (CDLs) are most helpful for expanding, enhancing and transforming teacher education? We use the New York State Digital Fluency and Computing Standards as inspiration, but teacher educators might find many other CDLs relevant to their work across teacher education. Practices that CUNY faculty have found especially relevant to their contexts include:
Digital Literacies
- Digitally-supported communication, participation, reflection
- Critically and ethically navigating digital tools, information, and media ecosystems
- Digital storytelling / composition
- Promoting digital citizenship, privacy, health, and safety online
Computing Literacies
- Prototyping, remixing, iterating
- Tinkering, experimentation
- Data practices
- Modeling and simulation
- Abstraction and decomposition
- Algorithms, programming, debugging
Consult our Computing/Digital literacies gallery to find definitions for some of these terms.
CITE Equitable Pedagogy
We want computing and digital literacies integration to be driven by the values of our broader community, especially those values around promoting equitable teaching and learning.
Below, we summarize the work of CITE’s Equity Working Group to share what we think a praxis of equitable pedagogy entails. See an expanded write-up by the working group here.
Equitable CITE pedagogy should…
- empower learners and communities
- promote joyful, meaningful learning
- transform institutions towards justice
….for teacher educators, teacher candidates and alum, P-12 students, families, and communities.
To meet those goals, we hope teacher educators and candidates engage in affirming, learner-centered design processes guided by equity-focused mindsets such as practicing self-awareness, recognizing oppression, seeking liberatory collaboration, working with fear and discomfort, and working to transform power. There are also some principles that might guide teacher educators and candidates as they design learning experiences and environments. These design principles are not checkboxes, but rather should be considered holistically together. CITE designs should promote…
- Co-learning and co-construction of knowledge in communities
- Supporting learner agency to tinker with, modify and create tools
- Centering creativity and expression
- Mobilizing computing and digital tools for social action
- Vetting and critiquing tools, tech and tech cultures
- Adopting expansive notions of learning and assessment
Looking to dive deeper into the CITE framework?
Check out a version of this framework we wrote for the field! See below:
Vogel, S., Yadav, A., Phelps, D., & Patel, A. (2024). Entry Points for Integrating Computing and Tech into Teacher Education: Addressing Problems and Opportunities with the EnCITE Framework. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 32(2). https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/223851/
Access the article through CUNY Academic Works here.
