Exploring pedagogical transfer readiness and critical reflections on AI and digital tools among preservice EFL teachers

The pedagogical integration of artificial intelligence, coding environments, and digital tools requires preservice teachers to move beyond recognizing technological usefulness and consider how particular tools might be used within specific instructional contexts. Eighteen preservice EFL teachers contributed evaluation data, although the number of valid daily responses decreased from 18 on Day 1 to 15 on Days 2 and 3. This exploratory study examined how preservice EFL teachers evaluated and pedagogically interpreted a three-day online professional development program involving AI-supported, coding-based, interactive, and multimedia tools. The study adopted a repeated convergent mixed-methods program-evaluation design. Quantitative session evaluations and open-ended reflections were collected concurrently at the end of each training day, analyzed separately, and integrated through joint displays and interpretive comparison. Descriptive results showed consistently positive self-reported evaluations across the three days, although the unmatched, post-session data do not support inferences about individual change or developmental trajectories. The qualitative responses contained evidence of tool-specific classroom applications, expressed intentions for future use, and reflections on practical constraints such as technical demands, accessibility, and classroom time. These findings were interpreted through Pedagogical Transfer Readiness (PTR), proposed here as an exploratory evaluative lens comprising perceived usefulness, pedagogical envisioning, transfer intention, and critical pedagogical awareness. In the present study, PTR refers to analytically distinguishable indications that participants recognized instructional value, imagined context-specific pedagogical applications, expressed intentions for possible future use, and reflected on conditions that might enable or constrain implementation. Taken together, the findings suggest that short, practice-oriented professional development can generate immediate evidence of pedagogically oriented reflection, while also illustrating the limitations of using post-program self-report data to infer sustained readiness or implementation. The study contributes a provisional framework for examining the space between positive technology evaluation and actual pedagogical transfer in preservice EFL teacher education. Not applicable.