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Rapid digitalization and the fast rise of generative AI tools pose fresh challenges to educational institutions, teachers, and students. Teachers of all subjects are expected to pass on key digital competencies along with subject-related knowledge to facilitate students’ employability and navigation in a society characterized by the impact of digital technology in all areas of life. However, several studies have shown that there is still a lack of integration of digital competencies in teacher training programs. Hence, to add to these previous studies, this paper aims to find and explore strategies and measures to equip secondary-level pre-service teachers with digital competencies and support them in professionally promoting their students’ digital skills. This happens by investigating what advanced pre-service teachers at a large European university miss and suggest changing to become more confident in promoting digital competencies at secondary school levels (K5–K12). In this context, the authors deepened a previously conducted university-wide survey among advanced secondary-level pre-service teachers through two focus groups to sharpen insights into challenges and good practices from the perspective of pre-service teachers. A thematic analysis of these focus groups confirmed the presumption that most pre-service teachers are keen on actively acquiring relevant digital competencies and gave insights into how they wish to have digital skills integrated into their studies. Additionally, it became evident that even though pre-service teachers can acquire several digital skills through self-study, they longed for collaboration and guidance to reach a professional level for “teaching” them to their students.

This article presents a progress report from the last two years of the Teaching Digital Thinking (TDT) project. This project aims to implement new concepts, didactic methods, and teaching formats for sustainable digital transformation in Austrian Universities’ curricula by introducing new digital competencies. By equipping students and teachers with 21st-century digital competencies, partner universities can contribute to solving global challenges and organizing pilot projects. In line with the overall project aims, this article presents the ongoing digital transformation activities, courses, and research in the project, which have been carried out by the five partner universities since 2020, and briefly discusses the results. This article presents a summary of the research and educational activities carried out within two parts: complementary research and pilot projects.