An online community to support the teacher transition to ICT competencies
Author(s):
Manuel Caeiro (submitting) Antonia Blanco Pesqueira (presenting)
Fernando Fraga (presenting)
Conference:
ECER 2015
Network:
10. Teacher Education Research
Format:
Paper

Session Information

10 SES 12 A,

Paper Session

Time:
2015-09-11
09:00-10:30
Room:
VII. Előadó [C]
Chair:
Eamonn Pugh

Contribution

Our proposal is centred on the study of the didactic transition from (traditional) educational resources to digital resources. How is this transition being produced? What is the state in pre-service and in-service teacher training related to digital competences? We are interested in analysing these issues in the context of the European educational legal framework, more specifically in Spain and Portugal. We want to check the situation in these two countries accordingly to our research problem.

 

The conclusions of the Council of the European Union (2014) include a discussion about effective teaching. We take into account this analysis together with its recommendations and agreements to focus our work. Documents such as the Talis Project (OECD, 2014), PISA Report (OECD, 2012), Europe 2020 or ICT Competency Standards for teachers and learners (European Commission, 2010), among others that we are working on, have defined the theoretical dimensions and categories of our research landscape.

 

The three priorities of the Europe Strategy 2020 (European Commission, 2010): smart, sustainable and inclusive growth; give full sense to the goal of our research work because they light up and show the way towards a change that on these days is becoming a compromise from different points of view: political, social and economic. On the one hand, educational researchers and teachers are called to contribute to such a demand of growth. On the other hand, in our professional career as trainers of future teachers/professionals, we have witnessed how the transition to digitalisation is taking too long.

 

At this point we asked ourselves another set of questions:

·      What is the reason of the current failure?

·      Who has been involved in these processes up to date?

·      What is wrong in the educational policy in order not to be effective in teaching contexts?

·      Do trainers of future teachers have competency in the management of digital resources for teaching?

 

We have taken as referents to prepare the state of the art the aforementioned reports. The TALIS report indicates headmasters of Spanish secondary school educational centres do not have the resources needed to work digital competency with their learners (37% have scarcity of computers and/or computer applications). The same percentage is found in the average number of centres without Internet connexion. This is one of the factors that have caught us by surprise because this is “placing in check” to some norms from the last 25 years, focused on digital competences. In Span there have been several national educational programmes: LOGSE (1990), LOE (2006), LOMEC (2013). Due to this failure, we understand they are not legitimate in the educational communities.

 

The report “Competencia Digital” (2011) confirms our hypothesis when it indicates that it is important “the creation of virtual communities of teachers where they can share resources (annotations, instructional materials, etc.)” (p. 7). We think this is a main step towards achieving a transition to a real, effective, valid and significant use of digital resources. Virtual communities are spaces that promote the participation and collaboration among peers. Common practices in these communities, such as knowledge sharing, showing the opinion to other teachers, exchanging classroom experiences and so on, demand a new kind of teacher profile.  This new profile involves not just training learners, but to engage the teacher him-/her-self as part of a global community where he can share his/her knowledge and experience and learn from other teachers.

Method

This piece of research is being developed by a multidisciplinary team of researchers grouped under the TELGalicia network (http://www.redetelgalicia.com). This network has as part of its activities the promotion of Open Educational Resources (OERs) for teachers at different educational levels. More specifically, this action is being carried our in the Edu-AREA web platform (http://www.edu-area.com). Edu-AREA is a kind of Web 2.0 application where teachers can discover and share OERs, guides and experiences. Edu-AREA provides authoring and sharing functionalities allowing teachers to work in accordance with the ideas underlying the OERs movement, and more specially the UNESCO declaration (UNESCO, 2008). This piece of research has several work areas: • Working with other teachers in discussion groups. • Working in the Edu-AREA web platform. This involves teachers authoring and editing their own resources, activities and experiences. • Working with trainers of future teachers. The work methodology is clearly qualitative because the managed data are opinions, experiences and contributions from teachers. To initiate our research we have elaborated a survey and already get responses from more that 200 teachers. We have used the UNESCO dimensions for the categorisation of ICT competencies: • 1: ICT basic knowledge. • 2: ICT knowledge deepening. • 3: ICT knowledge generation. We consider the following working hypothesis as a starting point: • a) During more than 20 years of educational laws about digital competencies we have not found a transition state yet, both related to teacher training (pre-service and in-service) as long as in the use of digital resources as a key factor in the promotion of significant learning. • b) Teachers feel low in motivation and even with at low professional self-esteem because they assess themselves as no-competent in the management of ICTs • c) The virtual communities among teachers will help to produce an more easy and effective transition of the digital competencies to the schools because they motivate teachers working in a cooperative and collaborative way

Expected Outcomes

Taken into account the hypothesis and the dimensions of the proposed study the expected results are: • A clear definition of the teaching staff development level (transition) in accordance with the UNESCO framework: ICT basic knowledge, knowledge deepening or knowledge generation. • To generate proposals of teacher training programmes gathering the principles of significant learning, involving both the cooperative and collaborative flavours. • Develop working projects for teacher training based on a “virtual communities” methodology to strengthen the concept of peer-based learning. • Encourage the use of ICTs by teaching staff, as a learning tool for their students.

References

Council of the European Union (2014). Council conclusions on 20 May 2014 on effective teacher education. Last accessed February 1st, 2015 from: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52014XG0614(05)&from=ES European Commission (2010). Europe 2020: a strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Last accessed February 1st, 2015 from: http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/employment_and_social_policy/eu2020/em0028_en.htm Ministry of Education (1990). Ley Orgánica General del Sistema Educativo (LOGSE) Nº 238. Boletín Oficial del Estado, Spain, 3 October 1990 Ministry of Education (2006). Ley Orgánica de Educación (LOE) Nº 106. Boletín Oficial del Estado, Spain, 4 May 2006 Ministry of Education 2011). Ley Orgánica para la mejora de la calidad educativa (LOMEC) Nº 295. Boletín Oficial del Estado, Spain, 10 December 2013 Ministerio de Educación, Instituto de Tecnologías Educativas Departamento de Proyectos Europeos (2011) . Competencia Digital. Last accessed February 1st, 2015 from: www.ite.educacion.es OECD (2012): Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results from PISA 2012-Spain. Last accessed February 1st, 2015 from: http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-spain.pdf OECD (2014): New insights from TALIS 2013. Teaching and learning in primary and upper secondary education. Published on December 9, 2014. Last accessed February 1st, 2015 from: http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/talis.htm UNESCO (2008). ICT Competency standards for teachers. Last accessed February 1st, 2015 from: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001562/156207e.pdf

Author Information

Manuel Caeiro (submitting)
Universidad de Vigo
Universidad de Vigo
Gondomar
Antonia Blanco Pesqueira (presenting)
Universidad de Vigo
PONTEVEDRA
Fernando Fraga (presenting)
Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain

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