Exploring the impact of micro:bit on pre-service teachers’ professional development

Many countries are integrating programming into their official curricula, recognizing its increasing importance. However, changing curricula alone is not enough. Essential are qualified and motivated teachers who can select and implement suitable learning environments. It can be assumed that the experiences gained by pre-service teachers (PSTs) during their own learning significantly influence the way they design their lessons later. Contributing to improving the quality of PSTs education, we developed workshops introducing block-based programming with micro:bit. This paper focuses on the theoretical foundation, practical implementation, and evaluation of the workshops. We investigate how PSTs benefit from our workshops. We examine the impact across four dimensions: problem-solving skills, motivation, collaboration and teamwork, and learning through discovery. We used a mixed-method approach to gather data from the PSTs: An online questionnaire combining questions with Likert-scaled answer options and open questions was used. The results indicate a strong positive trend in these four dimensions, suggesting that the micro:bit can enhance the personal and professional development of PSTs in programming.