Teachers' digital competence to assist students with functional diversity: Identification of factors through logistic regression methods

Abstract

We are experiencing a serious health crisis due to COVID‐19 that has a major impact on the field of education. The educational system therefore needs to be updated and innovated, with the addition of digital resources, to adapt the teaching and learning processes to students with disabilities. To meet the goal of high‐quality education, teachers must have adequate digital competence to face the educational demands that are placed on them. Therefore, the purposes of this study are: to know the teachers' knowledge about digital resources to support students with disabilities (O1); at each educational stage (O2), identify the variables that have a significant impact on the acquisition of teacher competence (O3); propose a selection of useful ICT resources for each type of disability (O4). An ex post facto design was used with 1194 teachers from Andalusia (Spain). The results showed the medium‐low level of the teaching staff, especially in the higher education stage. In addition, gender, motivation, attitude and having students with special needs are determining factors in the development of teacher knowledge. The results highlight the urgent need for teachers to be trained in digital resources. We hope that the range of resources proposed in this study will help teachers enhance their teaching practice. What we already know about this topic Teachers have to find and adapt educational technology to achieve a higher level of success in students with disabilities. The use of ICT resources by teachers acts as a bridge to promote learning in students with disabilities. What this paper adds Identification of those predictors that significantly influence the acquisition of digital competence in teaching staff at various stages of education: gender, educational stage, motivation, attitude towards technologies and having students with specific educational support needs. A proposal of didactic applications is provided to address the different types of functional diversity. Implications for practice and/or policy It is essential that training plans on digital competence are established to assist students with functional diversity in their different learning stages. In this sense, personalised training itineraries or TMOOCs can be of major assistance. Expansion of the study sample (macro level) to identify digital factors, which affect the acquisition of the digital competence of the teaching staff to support their students' disabilities. Change regarding the type of diagnosis through self‐perception tests, such as those presented by these models, and subsequent work in other fields such as e‐portfolios of evidence or instruments in the form of problem solving.

Pedagogical Patterns for tMOOC as a Social Technology of Relationship

“…It has been shown that patterns emphasize collaborative tasks and that the designbased methodology (IBL) is beneficial for the formation of digital teaching competence [3][4][5].…”

“…Gros et al [13] points out the link with connectivist theories and sociocultural constructivism, and Gonzalez et al [27] does so with constructivism. In another order, a call to the usual sociocultural approach in the nature of MOOCs is presented in the empirical study dedicated to the level of development of teaching digital competence in [4].…”

“…The importance of this study consists in its focus on digital teaching competence [1,2], as this becomes a challenge that, under the framework of the European Union [3], stimulates teacher training in skills related to technologies of information and communication [4]. In addition to the fact that young people are attracted to new technologies [5], it also happens that the degree of satisfaction of teachers in their training does not present very high values [6].…”

Knowledge of university teachers on the use of digital resources to assist people with disabilities. The case of Spain

“…According to Peláez ( 2016 ), Logistic Regression is a multivariate statistical technique that allows estimating the relationship between a dependent variable (digital competence), and a set of independent variables (gender, age, experience and ownership of the center). This analysis technique is the most appropriate to find out if a set of variables explains the level of digital competence of teachers and has been used in other related research (Cabero-Almenara et al, 2021a ; Cabero-Almenara et al, 2021b ).…”

¿Jugamos o gamificamos? Diseño y evaluación de experiencia formativa para la mejora de las competencias digitales del profesorado universitario

“…Aun así, también es necesario apuntar distintas limitaciones del estudio como el número de muestra reducida o la especificidad del contexto donde se desarrolla la propuesta formativa. Por ello, sería interesante la replicación del modelo en estudios e investigaciones con la misma o diferente metodología como, por ejemplo, el Scape-Room o la Flipped Clasrroom, puesto que también poseen un alto potencial educativo (Cabero-Almenara et al, 2021a, 2021b, o a través de la incorporación de diferentes tecnologías, sobre todo, a través de las denominadas tecnologías emergentes (Guillén-Gámez et al, 2021;López-Cortes et al, 2021).…”