A common challenge in teacher education is the perceived or created gap between theoretical education at the university and practical training at schools (Ebbelind & Helliwell, 2024). Additionally, there is a lack of digitally oriented didactics in teacher education (Papavlasopoulou et al., 2023). This is problematic as many children live in hybrid realities where analog and digital experiences are so intertwined that they cannot be separated. At the same time, some children lack these experiences. This study explores how school-age educare (SAEC) teacher students, who have engaged in both theoretical and practical elements at university and practice schools, reason about designing theoretically based learning activities that include digital tools. The specific research questions are:

In what ways do students perceive that the university course activities prepare them to design hybrid learning activities?

What emerges as central in students’ reasoning about designing SAEC teaching activities that include digital tools?

A central premise of this study is that pupils should develop digital competence early on to be able to become active members of a digitized society. To achieve this, teachers need to make scientifically based didactic choices to promote pupils’ learning (Wernholm, 2024). This study focuses on preparing SAEC teacher students to make such choices regarding the use of digital tools in their teaching practice. Internationally, Swedish SAEC is unique due to its close collaboration with compulsory schools and its combination of teaching, recreation, and meaningful leisure time. However, previous research identifies tensions between what SAEC teachers consider good practice and children’s perspectives on meaningful leisure time (Elvstrand et al., 2023).

This study is theoretically grounded in Design for Learning (Selander, 2008), which views teaching and learning as a form of multimodal design. The study’s design and the SAEC teacher students’ design of hybrid learning utilized tools developed within Design for Learning as part of a university course. SAEC teacher students participated in a teaching sequence with theoretical and practical elements at the university and two days at a practice school.

Data consists of 17 teacher students’ written reflections and two interviews; one individual and one group interview. Thematic analysis was performed to identify themes relevant to the study’s purpose and research questions. Preliminary results indicate that several students make explicit connections between theory and practice and express how the course elements help them acquire a theoretical model useful for designing hybrid learning activities in SAEC. Furthermore, the SAEC students express a will to work with hybrid learning activities in their future profession. They explain why and how hybrid learning activities are suitable for SAEC teaching, as they combine planned learning activities with pupils’ interests, making them meaningful. These results highlight the importance of preparing students, both theoretically and practically, for designing hybrid learning activities in SAEC.