Teacher educators’ use and needs of digital competence to support students’ online learning

• The paper is based on a study at two universities in Sweden with the aim to identify and analyse teacher educators' expressed use and needs of digital competence in higher education. The research questions are: a) How do teacher educators use digital tools? b) How do teacher educators evaluate their competence to effectively use ICT? c) What training do teacher educators need to make students functional online? Methodically, a digital survey was distributed via e-mail to 405 teacher educators representing two faculties at the two different universities, 105 respondents answered (26%). The survey included 28 questions with both closed-ended questions (Likert six-point scale), as well as open-ended questions. Two theoretical foundations are applied to analyse different aspects of the teacher’s use and need of ICT knowledge and competence: 1) The TPACK model and the interaction between the three knowledge domains: Pedagogical knowledge (PK), Technical knowledge (TK) and Content knowledge (CK), and 2) three dimensions of Computer Self-Efficacy (CSE), magnitude, strength and generalizability. Results show that 92.3% of respondents use a laptop and 18.3% use interactive boards in their work. Further, respondents who report a low competence regarding digitalization of teaching (16.3%) report a significantly higher need of training (p<0.05) compared to respondents reporting a high competence (27.9%). Also, respondents who report a high competence regarding digitalization of teaching, report creating digital learning environments as something unproblematic to a significantly higher extent (p<0.001) compared to respondents reporting a low competence. 26.3% of the teacher educators (n=15) want trainings in content knowledge and 17.5% (n=10) in technical knowledge, as well as interactions between them. The findings show that all teacher educators use digital tools in planning and executing teaching. However, few teacher educators rate their ICT competence as high and want more training regrading subject didactic knowledge in the students teaching practice.

Nyckelord

Computer Self-Efficacy

Digital competence

Digital teaching

Higher education

Teacher educators

Teacher training

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)