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Literature has documented the benefits of problem-based learning (PBL), but also shown significant barriers to using PBL in K-12 education. Yet, the research describing why and how K-12 teachers implement PBL is insufficient. In this qualitative study, using semi-structured interviews, we investigate why 25 middle school teachers chose to implement a technology-enriched PBL program, challenges they encountered, and facilitation strategies they used to address those challenges. The findings of this study showed that teachers were motivated not only by PBL's alignment with their beliefs, but by their students' positive learning outcomes. The interviews revealed two significant pedagogical challenges for teachers: (a) knowing when to let go of control as opposed to when to step in to facilitate, and (b) determining how to provide additional support to students with special needs. Nine types of facilitation strategies to deal with these challenges were identified.

We examined teachers' pedagogical reasoning for and the technological knowledge underlying their most‐valued technology‐supported activities for teaching and learning. Data from 140 preservice and 100 inservice teachers included open‐ended, narrative responses to survey questions. Qualitative research methods guided analysis of the data that identified (a) the technology‐supported activities and (b) the technical tools, target users, types of uses, rationales for use, and the TPACK underlying each activity. Preservice teachers described mostly teacher‐focused and fewer student‐focused techno‐activities, and their reasoning for use focused on the technology's presentational and engagement effects. A majority of inservice teachers' techno‐activities were student‐focused, and their reasoning highlighted the technology's support for knowledge acquisition of higher‐order cognitive skills and collaborative learning. The knowledge underlying all teachers' techno‐activities was predominantly technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK), but inservice teachers also evidenced technological content knowledge (TCK). These results may reveal differences in the teachers' respective learning experiences in teacher education and professional development or reflect a professional maturation process in that it takes teachers time in the field as professionals to broaden their techno‐activity repertoires to prioritize student‐focus. Sharing the reasoning patterns in this study with teachers may assist them in developing deeper justifications for their technological work in the classroom. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: The instructional use of technology in PK‐12 education is predominantly teacher‐focused and transmissive in nature.Teachers' perceived technological pedagogical content knowledge may not aptly reflect their behavioural intentions or smoothly translate into enacted, aligned actions in the classroom.Little is known about teachers' pedagogical reasoning underlying their choices of instructional technology use and its relationship to technological pedagogical content knowledge. What this paper adds: Pre‐service teachers described mostly teacher‐focused techno‐activities, and in‐service teachers described more student‐focused techno‐activities.Pre‐service and in‐service teachers used different pedagogical reasoning for the same categories of technology‐supported activities; thus they valued different technological features.Pre‐service teachers applied less content‐specific knowledge in their pedagogical reasoning as compared with in‐service teachers, but both groups relied predominantly on technological pedagogical knowledge. Implications for practice and/or policy: Pre‐service teachers' prominent use of and value for presentational technologies may indicate that modelling student‐ and/or content‐focused techno‐activities is needed within teacher preparation.Cultivating and sharing teachers' pedagogical reasoning for technology‐integrated lessons may increase teachers' awareness and support deeper justifications within their technological decision‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]