“I just Google it” - Developing professional digital competence and preparing student teachers to exercise responsible ICT use

Abstract

The rapid emergence of information and communication technology (ICT) has had implications for the education system and initial teacher education (ITE) in particular. This study investigated the extent to which teacher education assists student teachers in developing their professional digital competence (PDC) in general and, more specifically, their competence in using ICT responsibly. Responsible use of ICT is here taken to include privacy and copyright issues, ethical issues and the ability to evaluate digital information. To explore Norwegian student teachers’ perspectives, awareness and experience of the responsible use of ICT, in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 student teachers before their practice placements at local schools and with six students after their practice placements. Overall, the findings indicate that the student teachers mostly knew how to search for and evaluate digital information, but that they tended to choose the most convenient approach for search and evaluation. Further, it seems that the student teachers were aware to some extent of how to avoid advertisements, marketing or inappropriate content when using online resources in the classroom. However, they had limited competence in dealing with privacy and copyright issues in a teaching setting. One of the challenges identified through this study is that, during practice placements, the attention seems to be on the technical aspects of ICT rather than on pedagogical or responsible ways of using ICT. The study concludes that teacher education programmes need to include responsible use of ICT as an integral part of their programme, as well as during student teachers’ practice placements in schools, rather than providing stand-alone activities or courses of limited duration.

Conditions for professional digital competence: the teacher educators’ view

“…Norwegian TE emphasises that student teachers should develop sufficient PDC and be able to use digital technology in a pedagogically sound way in teaching, administrative work, evaluation, and research (Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik, 2020;Instefjord & Munthe, 2016;Tømte, Kårstein, & Olsen, 2013). According to Lund et al (2014), teacher educators must teach student teachers to transform their PDC into practice (cf.…”

“…Even if the teacher educators felt comfortable using rather basic technology such as PowerPoint or a learning management platform for course administration, they often voiced a wish for more advanced use and deeper understanding. That is, they are aware of their dual didactic task in using digital technology in their teaching practice in TE in such a way that the student teachers are given the opportunity to develop their PDC, including how to integrate the technology in the classroom practice in an informed pedagogical and didactic way (Admiraal et al, 2017;Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik, 2018, 2020Instefjord & Munthe, 2017). For example, one of the teacher educators expressed the desire to have the ability to post relevant questions and facilitate discussions in a critical and reflective way that would make student teachers position the rapid digitalisation of Swedish society in relation to the teaching profession and their future profession.…”

Digital Citizenship and Professional Digital Competence — Swedish Subject Teacher Education in a Postdigital Era

“…This paper uses PDC as a conceptual model to explore how conceptualizations of digital citizenship relate to dimensions of TEDs' PDC. This approach echoes Gudmundsdottir and Hatlevik's (2020) use of PDC to examine TE focusing on digital responsibility, which is often included in conceptualizations of digital citizenship.…”

“…In the field of digital citizenship, educational research has largely focused on teachers and pupils in K-12 classrooms while TE has not been studied to the same extent. Examples include TEDs' and student teachers' perspectives in relation to specific areas of digital citizenship, such as responsible use of digital technologies (e.g., Gudmundsdottir and Hatlevik 2020;Lindsey 2015), which may be limited in conceptual scope (Heath 2018). This indicates a need for more educational research on digital citizenship (Christensen et al 2021;Lauricella et al 2020) and specifically TE research with broader approaches to digital citizenship, also focusing on Sweden.…”

From digital competence to Professional Digital Competence

“…Later, they found that students' search strategies were often restricted to the use of Google. They also revealed that students were aware of the risks of finding inappropriate content online but that they had only limited competence in dealing with privacy and copyright issues (Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik, 2020). Hjukse et al (2020) indicated that PDC development varied from subject to subject, and that teacher educators tended, in general, to focus more on how digital technology should be applied in education, rather than addressing the various issues that users encounter in digital educational contexts, such as digital bullying and adapted learning (Hjukse et.al., 2020).…”