Future teachers’ beliefs about technology can shape whether ICT reaches the classroom effectively. Yet this review finds a research landscape concentrated on general ICT attitudes, with limited attention to newer technologies and regional differences.

This scoping review aims to map the current understanding of pre-service teachers’ beliefs about ICT, identify critical research gaps, and provide actionable insights for teacher education policy and practice. A comprehensive search of seven electronic databases yielded one thousand three hundred sixty-six studies, of which two hundred seventy-seven were included.

In the evolving landscape of global education, the integration of Information and Communication Technology, or ICT, has become a pivotal element in shaping teaching methodologies and educational outcomes. ICT tools can significantly improve student performance, motivation, and problem-solving skills by making learning more interactive and engaging.

The proficiency and attitudes of pre-service teachers towards ICT are critical as they form the backbone of future educational delivery systems. These beliefs influence how prospective teachers will use ICT in their classrooms, impacting the quality of education and the success of technological integration.

Understanding pre-service teachers’ ICT beliefs is vital for promoting effective teaching practices in the future and crucial for enhancing their future teaching practices. This scoping review adopts a systematic framework to bridge these gaps, providing insights into how beliefs shape teaching practices and identifying directions for future research and policy.

The approach for this scoping review is underpinned by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement and the framework developed by Arksey and O’Malley. This approach adopts a rigorous process and holistic view of transparency during the scoping review, which enables the replication of the search strategy and increases the reliability of the findings.

It is organized in five distinct stages: developing the initial research questions, identifying relevant studies, selecting studies with clear inclusion and exclusion criteria, extracting and charting key information, and summarizing and synthesizing the findings. Key search terms and concepts were developed to identify literature relating to pre-service teachers’ or prospective teachers’ beliefs or attitudes to ICT or technology tools.

Boolean operators to combine, narrow, or widen the literature search were adopted in the searching techniques. A university librarian was consulted to refine the key search terms, devise the search techniques, and identify the relevant databases in the educational field for optimized results.

The inclusion and exclusion criteria were identified directly from the research questions to guide this scoping review and to help provide comprehensiveness and transparency in the identification of primary evidence. The time period for the considered literature was set to studies in the twenty-first century, from January two thousand to July two thousand twenty-four.

All the literature database searches were limited to English-language articles, excluding non-English studies and pre-two-thousand literature. Figure one presents the PRISMA flow diagram, tracing how records moved from database searches through screening, eligibility assessment, and final inclusion.

It shows one thousand three hundred sixty-six records identified, with duplicates removed before screening, followed by exclusions at the screening and eligibility stages. The diagram reports two hundred seventy-seven new studies included in the review, making the selection process transparent and linking it to the authors’ predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria.

The data charting process in a scoping review is a critical step to structure and synthesize the vast amount of data collected from various sources. This process facilitates the understanding and interpretation of broad thematic patterns and trends within the scope of the review.

A structured data extraction form was designed, each included article was read in detail, and relevant data were extracted and entered into the template. The data extraction template was iteratively updated as needed when new relevant categories of data emerged during the charting process.

The initial search yielded one thousand three hundred sixty-six studies; these were reduced to a total of two hundred seventy-seven studies by using the inclusion and exclusion criteria to refine the selection. The charting revealed seven different topic categories, and the majority of the studies focused on ICT beliefs in general, with one hundred seventy-three studies.

Other topics included teacher ICT training programs, technology competence and literacy, comparison of ICT beliefs, relationship studies, ICT beliefs modeling, and perceptions of ICT-based teaching and learning. Table four continues the study profile by reporting school context, study regions, training needs, and whether demographic information was included.

Most entries for school context are unspecified, with one hundred sixty-seven studies, while the regional breakdown lists Turkey at seventy-nine and the United States at sixty-seven; regional percentages are marked not applicable. The table also records training needs in ninety-four studies and demographic information in one hundred sixty studies, helping characterize how the included empirical literature was documented.

The majority of the ICT described in the studies was ICT in general, not specifying one particular type of ICT tool, with one hundred sixty studies. Computers followed with forty-seven studies, while the internet appeared in fourteen studies and digital storytelling in eleven studies.

Sixty percent of the studies did not provide the settings or the level of teaching of the pre-service teachers. Only eleven studies included in this review on empirical studies of pre-service teachers were set in pre-schools. The included sources came from forty-seven different countries, with Turkey and the United States showing a greater state of interest in pre-service ICT beliefs.

Turkey contributed seventy-nine studies and the United States contributed sixty-seven, followed by China, Singapore, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom. More than one-third of the studies mentioned training needs in the discussion, and fifty-eight percent collected the participants’ demographic information.

Seven themes represent the most discussed issues regarding the ICT beliefs of pre-service teachers. The most frequently noted theme was the description of pre-service teachers’ ICT beliefs in general, and another frequently noted topic was the measurement of ICT beliefs in teacher ICT training programs.

Technology competence and literacy mainly focused on the confidence and self-efficacy of pre-service teachers with regard to digital literacy and competence. The design of the included empirical studies mostly relied on previous research and was therefore progressive or cumulative in nature.

The two most commonly used kinds of instruments for quantitative data collection were the Technology Attitude Scale and the Computer Attitude Scale. Other surveys adopted the Attitude towards Educational Technology Scale, Technology Perception Scale, General Attitudes Towards Digital Technologies, Digital Technologies Survey, Technology Acceptance Scale, and other attitude scales.

Most studies adopted or modified the categories of the Technology Acceptance Model into the instruments used. One extended version included perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norms, facilitating conditions, technological complexity, and attitudes towards computer use.

For qualitative data collection, interviews or focus groups, open-ended questions, observations, and written responses were the top-four approaches. Other approaches included portfolios, lesson plans, digital stories, micro-teaching, discussion, blogging, metaphors, artifacts, drawing, comics, journals, and document reviews.

The majority of studies focused on the perception of pre-service teachers regarding ICT in general or regarding one specific ICT tool. Very few studies focused on differences in ICT beliefs at a regional or national level or on the perception of multiple technologies. There were few studies regarding the perception of innovative and cutting-edge technologies from pre-service teachers.

Future research could be based more on cutting-edge technologies, such as wearable devices, artificial intelligence tools, virtual reality, augmented reality, and extended reality. There is limited research exploring the longitudinal impact of pre-service teachers’ beliefs about ICT on their actual teaching practices once they enter the workforce.

Few studies address the impact of cultural and regional differences on ICT beliefs among pre-service teachers. There is a need for more empirical research focusing on the effectiveness of specific interventions designed to alter or enhance pre-service teachers’ beliefs and competencies in ICT.

A scoping review was used as a rapid method for mapping and synthesizing the existing literature and for identifying knowledge gaps for future research. Scoping reviews are considered to be a rapid review method to synthesize knowledge in a systematic but simplified manner; however, they are not a rapid process.

After developing a search strategy, obtaining a comprehensive entry of the existing literature, and selecting studies using inclusion and exclusion criteria, the data extraction and charting processes were demanding. This scoping review included non-peer-reviewed articles or manuscript in English only, which raises the possibility of excluding relevant studies in other languages.

Scoping reviews share part of the process of systematic review methodology; however, they are not intended to assess the quality of the scoped literature. Since the quality of the selected studies could not be assessed, there may be further unidentified gaps.

Since the completeness of this scoping review was determined by time constraints, it still needs to be updated in the future to cover the latest literatures. The inclusion of studies up to July two thousand twenty-four limits the inclusion of subsequent developments after the search date of July nineteenth, two thousand twenty-four.

This limitation highlights the need for future research to explore historical and non-English contributions to provide a holistic perspective. The literature is broad but uneven: quantitative studies and general ICT beliefs dominate, while cutting-edge technologies, regional contexts, qualitative work, and long-term classroom effects remain underexplored.