Digital Competence, Teacher Self-Efficacy and Training Needs

Abstract

Computing related content is introduced in school curricula all over the world, placing new requirements on school teachers and their knowledge. Little attention has been paid to fostering the skills and attitudes required to teach the new content. This involves not only traditional computing topics, such as algorithms or programming, but also the role of technology in society as well as questions related to ethics, safety and integrity. As technology develops at a fast rate, so does the content to be taught. Learning computing content through isolated in-service training initiatives is by no means enough, but rather, teachers need to develop confidence to independently and continuously explore what is new, what is relevant and how to include digital competence in their teaching. Teachers' self-efficacy is hence of crucial importance. In a previous article [13] we described the development of a self-efficacy scale for teachers, focusing on digital competence as described in EU's framework DigComp 2.0. In this paper, we extend that work by analysing 530 teachers' responses collected in Autumn 2017 during a series of workshops and other professional development events. Our goal was to collect baseline data, painting a picture of teachers' current self-efficacy levels in order to facilitate follow-up studies. In addition, our results also point out challenging areas, consequently providing important insight into what topics and themes should be emphasized in professional development initiatives.

Digital Capability and Communication Skill for Empowering Self-Efficacy in Tourism Industry

“…Ferreira, et.al [17] explain that self-efficacy is very important to develop digital capability in the context of Tourism e-Microentrepreneurial Self-Efficacy (TeMSE). Along with self-efficacy, digital capability has also been very important to meet the challenges to compete in the hospitality sector [14].…”

“…This study presents digital capability as an independent variable, measured by indicators which include; 1) information and data literacy, 2) communication and collaboration, 3) digital content creation, 4) safety and 5) problem solving [14].…”

Improving the Quality of Future Bilingual Mathematics Teachers Knowledge at University Using Digital Education Recourses

“…At the present stage it becomes necessary to include DER to the pedagogical process, which will allow future bilingual teachers to improve the quality of knowledge due to the needs of higher education (Amhag, Hellström, & Stigmar, 2019;Mannila, Nordén, & Pears, 2018). The content of pedagogical disciplines is gradually being revised.…”

Development and validation of the DIGIGLO, a tool for assessing the digital competence of educators

“…However, digital competence needs to be acquired not only by students but also by citizens in general (see, for example, the DigComp 2.0 framework: Vuorikari, Punie, Carretero, & Van den Brande, 2016) and by educators, in particular, especially in universities (Kress, 2010). In addition, teachers' self‐efficacy is of crucial importance and in this sense a self‐efficacy scale for teachers has already been developed, focusing on digital competence as described in EU's framework DigComp 2.0 (Mannila, Nordén, & Pears, 2018; Nordén, Mannila, & Pears, 2017). The importance of this is reflected in the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu; Redecker, 2017), which proposes 22 basic competences, organized into six areas, which educators should ideally acquire (Table 1).…”