Understanding the meaning of a digital school from the perspective of primary school teachers

Abstract

The Escol@s Digitais Project, under development in all public primary schools of Amadora municipality (Portugal), aims to support the process of digital transformation in school dynamics. In this article, we examine the meaning that the teachers who participate in this project attribute to the “digital school” concept. For this purpose, we mobilized a corpus of qualitative data obtained through an online questionnaire that included an open question, formulated in the following terms: “What do you think a `digital school´ could be?”. The analysis carried out, with peer validation, highlighted three dimensions that help us to understand the “digital school” concept in a holistic way: the first dimension underlines the elementary requirements to ensure the digitalization process in schools (strategic dimension); the second dimension highlights the pedagogical potential of digital tools (pedagogical dimension); and the third dimension emphasizes a set of values ​​and principles by which any school, more or less digital, should guide its action (axiological dimension). In conjunction with the results of recent studies, it is concluded that the ongoing digital transformation process, despite being complex and multifaceted, is necessary to raise education to a qualitatively higher level.