NJCIE 2021, Vol. 5(4), 70–85
http://doi.org/10.7577/njcie.4233
From digital
competence to Professional Digital Competence: Student teachers’ experiences of
and reflections on how teacher education prepares them for working life
Aslaug
Grov Almås[1]
Western Norway
University of Applied Sciences
Agnete
Andersen Bueie
University of
South-Eastern Norway
Toril
Aagaard
University of
South-Eastern Norway
Copyright the authors
Received 28 February
2021; accepted 06 September
2021
Abstract
The authors of this article have collaborated
as part of a steering group for Norwegian state-funded research and development
project designed to enhance the professional digital competence (PDC) of both
teacher educators, practising, and student teachers. In this article, we give
voice to students’ experiences of their PDC development during teacher
education (TE). We investigate their ideas on how TE might be developed
to prepare them better for professional careers in a digital context. The
participants are studying at a Norwegian university where, from 2018 to 2021,
PDC has become a major area of focus as part of the aforementioned project. The
data consist of four group interviews with 17 students from different campuses.
We find that student teachers employ a broad range of digital technologies
during TE. They experience a diversity of digital didactical practices and
engage in thematic discussions concerning digitalization. They also utilise
many technologies and apply the digital knowledge they have acquired in their
personal lives. While some of them request more technical support during TE,
most want to see TE engaging them in more critical discussions about the
educational opportunities and challenges that digitalization offers. We discuss
some of the dilemmas that TE must address to respond to these findings. In
particular, we elaborate on how students’ digital experiences can be used as a
resource when preparing for their professional roles as teachers.
Keywords: student teachers, teacher education,
professional digital competence
Introduction
This article focuses on how student teachers
develop their professional digital competence (PDC). Norwegian students are
expected to have attained a certain level of relevant digital competency on
entering teacher education (TE), not least because they have grown up in a
digital society with a school system that encourages the use of digital tools
as part of the learning process. As early as 2006, digital skills were defined
as a basic area of competence in all schools in Norway, together with skills in
reading, writing, oral communication, and mathematics. It has thus been clear
that subject teachers at all school grade levels share responsibility for
teaching digital skills to their students (NOU 2014:7). We also know that
digitalization influences the lives of young people outside school. According
to the Norwegian Media Authority, 97% of 9- to 18-year-olds in Norway have
their own mobile phone, 70% have their own PC, and 90% use social media
platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook (The Norwegian
Media Authority, 2020). In addition to being entertained, some will probably
also be familiar with the more disturbing aspects of digitalization. In 2020,
almost 50% of Norwegian girls aged 17 to 18 reported regretting sharing posts
on social media, while approximately 30% of 13 to18 year-olds had viewed posts
related to being very thin, fights or fight plans, or instructions on self-harm
(The Norwegian Media Authority, 2020). These statistics indicate that student
teachers will also have developed digital competencies that are relevant to
their future careers as teachers.
However, researchers such as Kirschner and
Bruyckere (2017) are eager to warn against overestimating the relevance of
young people's digital skills in preparation for higher education (HE) and
question the assertion that they are tech-savvy and multitasking experts simply
because they have grown up in a digital world. They are critical of the concept
of digital natives and argue that what young people learn before entering HE is
insufficient to meet the digital challenges they face as students. For example,
student teachers will need to learn how digital technologies can be used to
enhance school pupils’ learning experiences, and in safe ways. They must also
learn to exploit digital technologies in a variety of didactic practices, some
of which are highly subject-specific. This calls for teachers who can engage in
what Lund and Aagaard (2020, p. 68) describe as a “transformative digital
agency—that is, agency to identify educationally challenging situations and
turn to relevant digital resources (and other resources) to transform the
problem situation into a constructive and teachable event”. Globally, efforts
such as TPACK and DigCompEdu are being implemented to conceptualize and
operationalize the competencies required. In 2017, the Norwegian Directorate
for Education and Training launched its ‘Professional Digital Competence
Framework for Teachers’ (PDC).
We will elaborate on the PDC concept later, but
first, we wish to present our reasoning behind this study, in which our main
aim is to give voice to students’ experiences of, and reflections on, how their
PDC develops during TE. We shall accomplish this by addressing two research questions:
·
How do student teachers
characterize their PDC and the development of such competence during TE?
·
How do student teachers
suggest that TE could be enhanced to better prepare them for professional
careers as teachers in a digital context?
To answer these questions, we have analysed a
series of group interviews with students studying at a multi-campus university
in Norway.
Context of the study
The study was carried out at a university that
received NOK 20 million from the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research
to ensure that its TE programme is preparing students for a career in
digitalized classrooms within a digitalized society. The project was carried
out between 2018 and 2021, with data gathering taking place in October 2019. In
2017, the Norwegian TE programme was converted from a BA programme to an MA
programme. The MA programme for primary schools involves three mandatory
subjects: Norwegian (L1), mathematics, and pedagogy, while that for lower
secondary schools involves only one (pedagogy). This structure makes it
difficult to address interdisciplinary issues such as PDC coherently.
To contextualize our findings, we present some
of the key strategies that were applied during the project. Firstly, the
institution added learning outcomes to its programme plans to clarify subject
teachers’ responsibility for promoting PDC. Since PDC is a relatively new
concept, it was not possible to implement it using ‘top-down’ strategies alone.
The institution needed to develop a shared conceptual understanding and to
ensure that the benefits of existing and relevant knowledge about teaching and
learning were fully exploited. For this reason, members of the project group
incentivised both their colleagues and student teachers to engage in
re-designing educational practices and better aligning themselves to the needs
of a digitalized society. From a student perspective, this broader involvement
and bottom-up approach explain why some of the students attended classes in
which teachers conducted smaller research and development projects designed to
promote PDC, while others attended more traditional classes. The students also
participated in up to seven interdisciplinary PDC seminars, often attended by
teachers from the relevant field of practice. These seminars differed in number
and focus area across the four TE campuses.
In September 2019 we surveyed with the dual aim
of assessing the students’ perceived understanding of PDC and gathering reports
of their experiences of the PDC seminars. We also wanted to elicit suggestions
as to how TE should develop to better promote student teachers’ PDC
development. The results of the survey are analysed in detail elsewhere (Lund
& Aagaard, 2020), but we take this opportunity briefly to summarize the
findings that are most relevant to this article. Of the 182 students who
responded, 69% stated that they knew what PDC entailed. This finding surprised
us somewhat because even though PDC was defined very briefly in the survey’s
introductory text, it is a complex, dynamic term about which even teacher
educators appear to lack a common understanding. The survey also indicated that
students as a group had the experience of using a wide range of digital
technologies as part of their education.
The interviews analysed in this article were
conducted to look in greater depth into the students’ experiences with the
various PDC initiatives that were implemented across the four campuses. The
findings will facilitate a discussion on how a complex phenomenon such as PDC
can be implemented in a TE programme with few interdisciplinary structures.
Conceptual clarification
The university that the survey participants attend
employs the PDC framework developed by the Norwegian Directorate for Education
and Training (Kelentrić et al., 2017). It utilises the framework actively, but
also critically. The framework offers seven competence areas that student
teachers need to develop: 1) an awareness of how digitalization influences
schools and school subjects; 2) competency as a means of initiating and
engaging in educational change processes; 3) knowledge about ethical dilemmas
and how these should be addressed; 4) skills that enable them to design
educational practices relevant to the digital society in which we live; 5)
pedagogical and didactic knowledge; 6) familiarity with how to lead learning
processes, and 7) the facilitation of interaction and communication. Learning
outcomes were specifically linked to each of the competence areas, but no
guidelines were provided for how student teachers should achieve them.
PDC is a complex concept that is still ‘in the
making’. Hacking (1999) has argued that such concepts are both socially
constructed and interactive. In our case, the PDC concept has been
co-constructed by researchers, policymakers, teacher educators, and student
teachers as part of their respective efforts to identify the competencies that
a teacher needs to be well-prepared for teaching in a digital environment. The
conceptual understanding of PDC will shape the practices of teacher educators,
and operationalisation through action over time will enhance conceptual
understanding within TE.
What do we know about PDC development
in teacher education?
Several studies conducted both in Norway (Gudmundsdottir et al., 2014; Krumsvik,
2016; Tømte et al., 2013) and internationally (Arstorp, 2015; Tondeur et al.,
2016; Foulger et al., 2017; Nelson et al., 2019), have indicated that TE has
systematically enhanced student teachers’ PDC to a limited degree. Tømte (2015) has previously concluded, in agreement
with Kirschner and Bruyckere (2017), that even technically proficient students
did not necessarily know how to use ICT for learning purposes, and that even if
teacher educators demonstrated innovative ways of using ICT in pursuit of
pedagogical objectives, students often failed to recognize and learn from them.
In 2018, Gudmundsdottir and Hatlevik
demonstrated that newly qualified teachers’ PDC self-efficacy depended on how
they perceived the quality of their PDC development during TE. However, most of
the respondents considered this development to be fairly poor. Later, they
found that students’ search strategies were often restricted to the use of
Google. They also revealed that students were aware of the risks of finding
inappropriate content online but that they had only limited competence in
dealing with privacy and copyright issues (Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik,
2020).
Hjukse et al. (2020) indicated that PDC
development varied from subject to subject, and that teacher educators tended,
in general, to focus more on how digital technology should be applied in
education, rather than addressing the various issues that users encounter in
digital educational contexts, such as digital bullying and adapted learning
(Hjukse et.al., 2020). Lund and Aagaard (2020) have questioned the idea that
TE, in its efforts to foster student teachers’ PDC, tends to focus too much on
the use of digital technologies at the expense of addressing deeper and more
epistemological issues. This is the case even if digitalization has fundamental
consequences for how both students and school pupils obtain their knowledge.
Studies into PDC development in TE are increasing
but, as highlighted by Gudmundsdottir and Hatlevik (2018), there remains a need
for more research. Existing work has been based mainly on surveys, and more
qualitative approaches have been lacking. Our contribution towards filling this
‘gap’ involves an interview-based investigation of students’ experiences of PDC
development in an institution that has received public funding to prepare them
for a professional career in a digital context.
Reflection and PDC development
Professional development starts long before
student teachers enter their TE programmes. Their prior experiences and
memories will have laid the foundations for their attitudes and beliefs (Körrkö
et al., 2016). The importance of reflection in TE and development is well
documented (Schön, 1987, Calderhead, 1989, LaBosky, 1994, Korthagen &
Vasalos, 2005), and reflection on experience obtained during practice, as
highlighted by theoretical perspectives, tend to be highly influential for
learning (Darling-Hammond, 2006, Zeichner, 2010). Körrkö et al. (2016)
investigated primary school student teachers' practicum-related reflections and
found that while such reflections gradually broadened and deepened, they
remained primarily descriptive. However, it was also found that reflection
combined with feedback concerning their professional actions in the classroom
enhanced the students’ understanding of practical theories. The authors
concluded that supporting student teachers' reflective skills can impact
positively their professional development.
This has been confirmed by other researchers
(Aagaard & Lund, 2020; Brevik et al., 2019; Lund et al., 2019), who suggest
that engaging in transformative digital agency promotes educational designs
that are both relevant and aligned to the digital world in which we live. This
involves identifying challenging situations combined with an ability to
envisage alternative possible futures and solutions to the challenges. A recent
empirical study (Aagaard et al., in review) has indicated that reflection,
combined with the reading of academic literature and a critical attitude to
subject-specific traditions in learning communities, can support transformative
agency and the development of PDC. Gravett et al. (2017) have suggested that
experience from teaching practice can act as a springboard for reflection
linking theoretical and practical knowledge. Klemp (2013, p. 56) has shown that
engaging in dialogue with professionals can reinforce students' reflective
forward-thinking and challenge their prejudices.
Method
The study we present here is a case study,
carried out using an empirical method suitable for the in-depth investigation
of contemporary phenomena within a real-world context (Yin, 2018). Busch (2013)
has stated that a phenomenon can only be studied and fully understood in the
holistic context within which it is taking place. Our study involves a
selection of 17 students (12 female and 5 male) studying at four different
campuses at a university in Norway. The data comprise four group interviews
with the 17 students. One of the groups is taken from a TE programme with a
blended learning design in which the students undergo mainly online
face-to-face teaching, combined with a few weeks of campus residencies each
year. These students are significantly older than the others participating in
the study and many cases have established family lives.
A purposeful sampling approach (Creswell, 2015)
was adopted, selecting student teachers who had completed at least one year in
TE, two periods of school placement, as well as participation in subject
specific PDC initiatives and seminars. The leaders of the TE programmes at each
of the campuses assisted us in recruiting the participants. Participation was
based on informed consent, and the study was reported to the Norwegian Centre
for Research Data. An overview of the participants is given in Table 1.
Table 1. Overview of participants
The interviews were semi-structured and based on an interview guide using three
themes: 1) the student teachers’ understanding of PDC, 2) their experiences
with PDC during TE so far, and 3) their thoughts on how TE can help to develop
and improve their PDC. The interviews lasted for approximately 60 minutes and
were carried out face-to-face on the students’ respective campuses. The
interviews were conducted by the main author, who also carried out the first
review, with partial transcriptions, of the data. Subsequently, all three authors
listened to the recordings and jointly selected sections for transcription. All
three authors contributed to the data analysis. We chose to transcribe those
excerpts that were relevant to our research questions.
The interview data were analysed using thematic
content analysis (Creswell, 2015). Analysis was initiated by sorting according
to interview themes 1, 2, and 3 above. During the process, some new categories
evolved. Our analysis of students’ experiences in developing PDC showed that
these could be subdivided into three ‘experience categories’: 2a) the use of
specific digital technologies; 2b) digital didactical experiences, and 2c)
thematic PDC issues addressed in TE. We also found that the students had
acquired their PDC both in and outside TE.
Findings
In the following, we will attempt to answer our
research questions under three main headings: 1) how student teachers describe their
PDC; 2) how they develop PDC during teacher education and 3) how they propose
that teacher education might prepare them for professional careers as teachers
in a digital context.
How do student teachers describe
their PDC?
As noted previously in the context section, 69%
of student teachers responding to a survey used to evaluate PDC seminars either
agreed or very much agreed that they knew what PDC entailed. The interviews,
however, painted a very different picture.
The quotation “We are the digital generation,
we are doing well” is characteristic of how the students described their PDC. A
review of the data as a whole indicates that most students initially expressed
confidence when it came to using digital technologies and argued that they had
good digital skills. “I grew up with the Internet”, as one student put it. Most
students also expected that the development of their PDC was a process that
would continue after TE and throughout their teaching careers in response both
to evolution in digital technologies and how knowledge work is conducted. Many
expected that there would be no problem in finding out about how to use new
types of digital technologies. One student claimed that “if there is something
I don’t know about technology, it will be easy for me to learn how to use it”.
However, there was a minority that felt less confident, one of whom said, while
laughing: “I know how to use HDMI and PowerPoint”. Even if many of the students
believe that they will find out how digital technologies work, some also
expressed an awareness that they needed to learn more about how such tools can
be applied for teaching and learning in different subjects and across their
pupils’ age groups. The material as a whole indicated that few of the students
interviewed were familiar with the concept and the Norwegian PDC framework.
When describing their own PDC, they talked mostly about mastering digital
tools.
However, there were some exceptions. The
students from the campus with the blended learning programme were very familiar
with the PDC framework. PDC was often addressed as part of their TE programme,
which included seven dedicated interdisciplinary PDC seminars. The other
campuses had between only one and three such seminars. These students were
older, which might explain why the thoughts they expressed in interviews about
PDC were more mature and knowledgeable. Their discussions indicated that
participation in online teaching, combined with digital collaboration, also
generated PDC.
On being introduced to the PDC framework during
the interviews, all the students showed an interest in many of the PDC
categories and subsequently revealed a deeper understanding of PDC than they
had expressed initially. The framework generated critical reflections and
discussion on topics such as safe internet use, social media and digital
identity, digital bullying, and the potential inherent in learning through
gaming. Here, it was common for the students to refer to their personal
experiences and reflections. Some related stories about their children or
younger siblings who were gamers, while others reflected on their grandparents’
struggles to cope in a digitalized society.
In summary, our thematic analysis has revealed
that most of the student teachers tended initially to describe their PDC as
good. Most of them exhibited high levels of self-confidence when it came to
using established digital technologies and to learn to use new ones. While some
appeared to be developing somewhat robust PDC traits during TE, others
demonstrated a less aware and more experience-based PDC development.
How do student teachers describe
their PDC development during teacher education?
Table 2 provides a concise overview of the
students’ experiences of their PDC development, sorted according to the three
categories that emerged during the analysis (2a, 2b, and 2c). The students’
responses to open questions simply give us an insight into what they as groups
associated and spontaneously remembered in an interview setting. As a result,
the lists in Table 2 are not exhaustive. While some students referred to their
experiences from teaching practice, such as the use of VR, most are drawn from
experiences on campus.
Table 2. Student teachers’ experiences with
developing PDC in TE
The first two columns show that the participants had experienced exposure to a
broad range of digital technologies, and our overall impression is that most of
them were quite content with their use of technology during TE. Even though a
few students said that they would like to work with a larger digital toolbox
after TE, only one called for more training in the use of specific tools.
Another complained that her experience was limited primarily to PowerPoint.
However, the general tendency was that the students greatly appreciated being introduced
to the various digital tools and as previously mentioned, most seemed confident
in learning to use such tools on their own. Some felt that spending time
learning specific digital technologies during TE was problematic. As one
participant put it: “They (TE) sort of treated us as if we were at ‘ground
zero’, starting with zero knowledge, while most students in the classroom have
basic digital skills.”
Several students argued that digital
technologies and their usage change over time, making it difficult, and perhaps
even irrelevant, to learn the details of specific digital technologies during
TE. Some were amused by a PDC seminar dedicated to social issues on Facebook,
claiming that Facebook is irrelevant to young people of today. The following
student reflected upon his group examination, saying:
We had a group exam based on ‘Wikispaces’,
which now no longer exist. This is quite ironic... The outcome was restricted
as it was a bit outdated. Nevertheless, it was presented as “very good”, and
“this is digital”, and “you will need it in the future”.
The same student highlighted the possible risks
inherent in providing students with in-depth experience in technologies that
might become outdated by the time they graduated. Such feelings reveal that
students acknowledge that PDC development involves being prepared to deal with
a constantly fluctuating digital future.
Table 2 also reveals that the students were
exposed to a range of didactical digital experiences during TE and that, in
general, they found these to be very positive. They were particularly
appreciative when teacher educators invited them to reflect on experiences with
technology use in knowledge work and shared their pedagogical reasoning for
using technology during lessons. One student said:
In this subject, the teachers have been good at
justifying their choice of methods, which makes it easier for us to use them
later in practice. (…) There is no point in using digital technologies without
justifying why.
However, it is also clear that there was some
variation in the students’ experience of the value of didactical digital
experiences. Some groups had attended a learning lab, where they were
introduced to different types of digital tools. Some students stated that they
experienced these didactical digital experiences simply as playful activities.
And even if they did not describe the tools as worthless, some expressed a need
for more in-depth learning to gain a better understanding of their purpose.
Some wanted to learn more about programming and how to use tools such as Sphero
balls in school.
The interviews also revealed student teachers’
concerns about some of the thematic PDC issues that are addressed during TE. As
noted previously, they referred to several topics such as learning about source
criticism, GDPR, copyright, safe internet use, class leadership in a digital
context, social media use, and learning through gaming. Most of them considered
themselves to be well prepared to deal with such issues in a school setting,
even if some of this knowledge was experience-based and developed outside TE.
In a nutshell, our thematic analysis has
revealed that student teachers develop their PDC through the use of specific
digital technologies, didactical digital experiences, and by working with PDC issues
addressed during TE. There is some variation in terms of what they learn most
of, as is the case for their perceived needs and expectations regarding TE. The
material also reveals that the experiences of student teachers in terms of
their PDC development, even at the same university, vary depending on both
their teachers and the institutional priorities of their campus.
How do student teachers propose that
teacher education might prepare them for professional careers as teachers in a
digital context?
The interviews revealed that students felt that
some PDC issues were given too little attention during TE. These included
digitalization and democracy, digital bullying, digital identity, how
digitalization changes subjects in school, and the epistemic consequences of
digitalization. When the interviewer introduced these issues, which are also
included in the national PDC framework, most of the students appeared to be
somewhat insecure. However, raising such issues also spontaneously triggered
professional reflections that indicated a readiness and an interest in
reflecting on experiences both from practice and life in general, as well as a
desire to relate these to theoretical perspectives and, in this case, to PDC as
a concept. Many students called explicitly for an opportunity to engage in more
such reflections. As one put it: “They (TE) could have introduced us to this
model before (...) and the kind of conversation we have now.”
Even if many of the students interviewed
described the PDC seminars as useful, there was a general feeling that more
focus should be given to PDC during subject teaching. Most indicated that they
would like to spend more time discussing the reasons for didactical digital
practices during TE. One stated that “some of the teachers use the same tools
in different settings, just to reveal how they can be used”. She then added
that these teachers had in fact included them in reflections about didactical
choices and their relevance for learning in schools.
In summary, students tended not to complain
about how TE prepared them for careers as professional teachers in a
digitalised society. After initially presenting themselves as being highly
knowledgeable, they later acknowledged that there were important PDC issues
that they wished to learn more about during TE. Many proposed that PDC
development could be intensified both within and across school subjects, as
well as through didactical reflections.
Discussion
The purpose of this study is to give voice to
students’ experiences of their PDC development during TE, and their ideas about
how TE could be developed to better prepare them for professional careers as
teachers in a digital context. Our discussion is structured around two
particular topics. Firstly, we address the finding that student teachers’
conceptual understanding of PDC is vague. Secondly, we discuss the students’
proposals for how to improve the TE programme.
PDC ‘in the making’
At the university where this study was
conducted, PDC as a concept was understood in terms of how it was described in
the aforementioned framework. Nevertheless, we found that students from only
one of the four interview groups had no knowledge of the framework. Students
from the other groups were familiar with some of the content but needed help from
the interviewer to engage in conceptual reflections. This indicates that the
term PDC was only rarely mentioned as part of these students’ TE.
The PDC framework provides us with seven competence
areas and a great many topics that have to be addressed. The students continued
to speak about digital competence in terms of a set of generic skills, and the
use of technology was a key issue. However, they were also aware of the
differences between the digital competence that teachers need and that required
by other professions, and that the acquisition of knowledge within the PDC
framework requires different approaches. Students' stories from this study
support previous research that has concluded that TE is better at using digital
technology than it is working with topics that are relevant in the digital age
(Hjukse et al. 2020, Tømte et al, 2013; Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik, 2018).
We must keep in mind that the students
interviewed as part of this study had not yet graduated. The interviews were
snapshots, representative of the stage at which they found themselves in their
education. Their understanding of PDC is likely to develop during their
subsequent years in TE. Even so, the descriptions given in this study indicate
that a large number of concurrent activities offer students a vast number of
different experiences, as illustrated in Table 2. PDC is operationalized and
integrated into different ways both in the PDC seminars and during subject
teaching. This variation, combined with the fact that focus during TE is mainly
directed towards the use of tools, indicates that PDC is a field that is still
‘in the making’. The practical use of technology is a tangible, and perhaps
thus an easier, way of working with PDC than focusing on its epistemological
consequences.
Consequently, and during the interviews, a
knowledge of the PDC framework seemed to expand the students’ conceptual
understanding and generated several critical reflections and discussions. In so
doing it seemed to act as a tool for thought. Körrkö et al. (2016) have stated
that reflection, combined with feedback on professional actions in classrooms,
acts to enhance student teachers’ development of practical theories. As teacher
educators, our task is to support student teachers' reflective skills because
this will impact positively their professional development.
In this respect, the emergence of the PDC
concept and our understanding of it is very interesting. Moreover, the
students’ understanding does not have to agree with their teachers’. Concepts
are social and dynamic phenomena, and some voices have already suggested that
the current PDC framework lacks some key and highly relevant competencies. In
reflecting on this, we can refer to Hacking (1999) and his definition of
concepts as being both socially constructed and interactive. Our conceptual
understanding of PDC will shape TE practices, and its operationalisation
through action will in turn help to advance our understanding. This presents a
major challenge for TE, and in the following section, we will discuss student
teachers’ suggestions for how TE programmes can be improved in the context of
PDC.
Improvements in teacher education
that will promote student teachers’ PDC development
As we demonstrated in our review, previous
studies have shown that TE has failed to adequately prepare student teachers in
the field of PDC. Our study has introduced some nuances to this picture. The
students interviewed tended not to complain about how TE was preparing them for
professional careers as teachers in a digitalized society. They claimed that
they were skilled in the use of digital technologies, although this expertise
was mainly the result of their education. They typically referred to their
personal experiences when they talked on this issue and their reflections
tended to focus on the relevance of these experiences to the school context.
All the participants talked about their digital experiences during TE. They
said that they felt quite well prepared for their professional careers and
demonstrated an understanding that the field required continuous development.
Based on our findings, the students did not
expect TE to prepare them fully to deal with the PDC challenges they would
encounter in their teaching careers. However, we believe that it is not
unreasonable to question whether the students know what their needs are. Our
study has shown that their understanding of PDC was focused more on how to use
tools than on issues related to digitalization. This represents a limited level
of understanding of PDC when we compare it to how the concept is
operationalized in the PDC framework. In the light of this, we believe that
there is reason to argue that an important task of TE is to assist students in
moving from being digitally competent to becoming professionally digitally
competent. This implies that TE must focus on more than simply the use of
digital tools. It must encourage more reflective perspectives on the use of
technology and promote a critical consideration of what technology can offer to
students’ learning processes. It must also address what digitalization means
for knowledge work in the various school subjects.
A quotation from one of the students
interviewed was that “we are the ones who know this field”. This is partly
true, but even though students may feel that they are digitally competent, they
also need TE to help them frame this competence within a professional context.
Today’s student teachers all enter TE with a certain level of digital
competence. Our job in TE is to work together with our students to develop
their ‘just out of school’ competencies into a rounded professional competence.
Körrkö et al. (2016) argue that students’ digital professional competence
starts to develop before they enter TE. As professional educators within a
professional community, we have to promote our students’ capacity for
reflective forward-thinking and challenge their prejudices (Klemp, 2013).
It is not surprising that the students when
talking about PDC, focused primarily on the use of technology. A survey looking
into teacher educators’ PDC (Daus et al., 2019) demonstrated that this is also
the case for their teachers. Findings from this survey showed that teacher
educators agree that digitalization is changing TE. However, they also believe
that these changes are related most closely to the way TE is carried out in
terms of facilitating access to knowledge. They are less in agreement with the
idea that digitalization changes academic content (Daus et al., 2019, p. 23).
Aagaard and Lund (2020) have pointed out that digitalization has
epistemological consequences that have important impacts on educational
practices. The authors argue that student teachers have to “identify
educationally challenging situations and turn to relevant digital (and other)
resources to transform the problem situation into a constructive and teachable
event” (p. 68). The discussions that emerged after the students interviewed in
this study were introduced to the PDC framework indicate that knowledge of the
concept expands their previous skill-focused and limited conceptual
understanding, based on experiences both during and outside TE, compared with
their understanding before the interviews.
TE has an obligation to assist student teachers
to develop the qualifications, PDC included, that they need to conduct
themselves as professionals (Illeris, 2009) and to be able to complete tasks in
a qualified, correct, and ideal manner (Molander & Terum, 2008). One way is
to start is by promoting student teachers’ self-understanding as digitally
competent professionals because as future teachers they will get little
instruction in how to conduct themselves (Helleve et al., 2019). The issues
addressed in the PDC framework will thus be handled differently, depending on
the relevant context.
Conclusion
In conclusion, our study has shown that PDC is
a concept ‘in the making’ and that this may explain why student teachers have
yet to become fully familiar with it. Moreover, it may be difficult for them to
recognise the complexity of the concept when they are asked to talk about their
understanding and development of PDC. We note that the students were in the
middle of their education when they were being interviewed.
Our project was not finished when the
interviews were conducted, but our findings indicate that contemporary student
teachers enter TE with a well-developed digital competence, and that TE
sometimes tends to bring them back to ‘ground zero’. TE needs to meet student
teachers where they are and to recognize and exploit the digital competence
that students bring to TE. It has to support and advance their digital
competence into fully-fledged PDC. The majority of students are seeking a
deeper understanding of, and an opportunity to reflect on, how, when, and why
digital tools should be used in teaching.
A related issue concerns the position of
teacher educators in response to their students’ needs. To what extent are
teacher educators ready to engage with their students in reflections concerning
technology use as part of didactical practices, and to draw on their students’
established insights? This issue requires further research and is currently
being addressed by Info-TED (the International Forum for Teacher Educator
Development) and TETCs (Teacher Educator Technology Competencies).
Our findings are based on a limited number (17)
of participants, and the study was carried out in the context of a TE programme
that has received NOK 20 million as part of a project to prepare student teachers
for professional careers in a digital society. This background introduces a
potential constraint in terms of being able to generalise our results across
all TE programmes. However, our qualitative approach has provided an in-depth
insight into how a small sample of student teachers experience their PDC
development. TE in the west faces the challenge of implementing a competence
area that is complex and fairly new, and we believe that the results of our
study are of relevance beyond its present context. However, we strongly
recommend that future research should seek to investigate the same phenomenon
at different institutions.
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