As a response to the ongoing digital transformation that affects all areas of everyday life, Swiss authorities launched the implementation of a new modular "Media and ICT" (M&I) curriculum in public schools in all of the 21 German-speaking cantons of Switzerland in 2017 (educa.ch, 2020). This school reform brought about new requirements for teachers in terms of learning content and didactics of digital literacy. The national curriculum demands that teachers prepare their students for the digital society and workplace and therefore integrate the potential of digital media and informatics contents in their lessons. Literature on digitization processes in schools often addresses the digital literacy of teachers (e.g. Lorenz & Endberg, 2019; Prasse, 2012). Still, none of those studies report or specify competence profiles for teachers of M&I, and there is no common framework for the Swiss cantons regarding the required competencies of teachers (Petko, Döbeli Honegger & Prasse, 2018).

In the context of a larger Swiss National Science funded project (Grant #188867), this research project aims specifically at identifying the digital competencies that teachers need for curriculum-compliant M&I teaching. According to Klieme et al. (2003, p. 74), a competence model describes the structure of requirements (competence components) and assigns the different competence levels. This research, thus, refers to the COACTIV competence model (Baumert & Kunter, 2011) as a general competence model of teacher competencies. And, in order to understand what teachers need to know to effectively integrate technology into their teaching practices the COACTIV model is complemented with the theoretical framework TPACK (Mishra and Koehler, 2006). Based on this unified model, the required digital competencies of teachers are classified. Both models are based on the approach of taxonomies of teacher knowledge according to Shulman (1986). Although the COACTIV study (Baumert & Kunter, 2011) examined the professional knowledge of mathematics teachers, the authors point out that the competence model nevertheless serves as a suitable theoretical framework model for differentiation also in other subjects since it allows for the conceptualization of different aspects of teachers’ professional competence. The competence model divides professional knowledge into specialised knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and didactical knowledge. In addition, the competence model includes affective-motivational characteristics, which are not examined in detail in this study because they would go beyond the scope of this paper. In addition, the TPACK model (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) differentiates between three different types of knowledge, which show how content, technology and pedagogy form the foundation for an effective digital technology integration into teaching. The three types of knowledge are Technological Knowledge (TK), Content Knowledge (CK) and Pedagogical Knowledge (PK) which together form the interface Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (abbreviated as TPACK; Mishra & Koehler, 2006). The combination of the more general competence model COACTIV and the TPACK model, which specifically captures some of the essential qualities of teacher knowledge required for technology integration in teaching, allows to answer the research question “Which digital competencies are required of teachers in the course of the introduction of the M&I curriculum?”.

With a qualitative approach, this project develops a comprehensive understanding of the required digital competencies of teachers in Switzerland. To answer the research question, in a first step, document analysis is used to identify the requirements for M&I teachers. The data corpus includes all documents carrying information on the modular M&I curriculum respectively on its introduction, whether at the national, cantonal and political level, on the part of the school authorities, the universities of teacher education or also the public media, such as newspapers and professional journals. This analysis further reveals a number of experts and/or stakeholders who have been significantly involved in the introduction of the M&I module curriculum. In a second step, these actors from the field of educational policy and administration and from the universities of teacher education and school practice were asked to participate in expert interviews. The triangulation (Flick, 2011) of document and interview data allow for a detailed picture regarding teachers’ competence demands. Qualitative content analysis according to Mayring (2015) was applied to the data corpus in order to identify significant patterns of digital competencies from both sources of information. Then, based on this analysis, a combined competence model, following the model of professional action competence according to COACTIV (Baumert & Kunter, 2011) and the TPACK framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) was compiled.

The triangulation of the documents and expert interviews show that content knowledge respectively specialised knowledge and didactical knowledge in the field of M&I are the most important requirements and competence components for teachers. Experts emphasize, for example, that many teachers have not acquired this subject in their basic training programs, which is why they have a lack of basic knowledge in the area of M&I. For this reason, a specific introduction to the subject in the form of continuous education seems advisable in order to build up basic skills that will enable them to generate at least the knowledge that is also required of the students. The analysis also reveals that the didactic knowledge of the integration of M&I in other subjects seems to be particularly relevant for the teachers since the national guideline also provides an interdisciplinary approach to the implementation of M&I. This study demonstrates that the combination of the two competence models, COACTIV (Baumert & Kunter, 2011) and TPACK (Mishra & Koehler, 2006), allows, in particular, to classify requirements and was thus able to take into account the full range of required competence components for M&I teachers. Furthermore, this study may contribute to develop both programs in continuous education, particularly, in contexts of reform implementation and in basic training programs of teachers. Moreover, also students in public schools will benefit from this research because high-quality teaching and imparting of skills required by the curriculum reform depend in the first place on teachers with necessary professional skills and competencies. Regardless of where students attend public school, they all should have the right to the same level of professional M&I instruction. This study may therefore contribute to an effort of standardization of the digital requirements for teachers across all Swiss Cantons.

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