Abstract
Digital innovation in the educational sector requires pre-service teachers to have a high level of digital competence to follow current trends. For effective technology implementation, it is essential to apply specific strategies; reliable and beneficial strategies are offered by the SQD model. The topic needs to be addressed to explore strategies used by pre-service teachers and make comparisons between two universities. Quantitative data were collected via the survey of the SQD model and comparative analysis was conducted through the Mann-Whitney U-test. The detailed analysis allowed to arrange strategies into groups and find the indicators of understanding level. The findings show that pre-service teachers tend to follow examples and advice in technology implementation, whereas strategies related to communication are underused. The lack of collaboration and feedback is a sign of weak focus on higher-order thinking skills, it helps university authorities pay special attention to the implementation of higher-order thinking skills activities in the educational program. Moreover, despite the neglected use of collaboration and feedback, meaningful differences between universities were found in them. The practical significance of the study lies in the importance of SQD model strategies which mitigate pre-service teachers’ adaptation and readiness for effective technology implementation. Keywords: professional digital competence, strategies, SQD model, technology integration, pre-service teachers, digital education, digital environment, digital transformation.