Professional Digital Competence in Teacher Education : A mixed methods study of the emhasis on and integration of Professional Digital Competence in Teacher Education Programmes in Norway

Abstract

This thesis examines how professional digital competence is integrated in initial teacher education programmes in Norway. The thesis is article-based, comprising an extended abstract and three articles. The extended abstract comprises a review of relevant research, theoretical foundation, methodology and research design, and a summary and general discussion of the three articles. The extended abstract is closed with a discussion of the main research question, main findings, implications and limitations, and some final conclusions. The overall aim of the study is to gain knowledge about how pre-service teachers are trained to use technology during their time in teacher training. The thesis is grounded on a general assumption that use of technology and development of professional digital competence for pre-service teachers take place within a sociocultural environment. Therefore, the thesis draws on a sociocultural perspective, with particular focus on Wertsch’s (1998) distinction between mastery and appropriation of cultural artefacts. This theoretical foundation is integrated with theories and research on digital competence. The main research question for the thesis is: How do initial teacher education programmes in Norway attend to integration of technology and development of pre-service teachers’ professional digital competence? The research question has been operationalized through three sub-questions. Each of these questions have been explored through an individual sub-study, and reported in an article. Methodologically, the thesis uses a mixed methods approach to study the qualitative and quantitative aspects of integration of digital competence in teacher education. This choice is grounded on the premise that a combination of multiple sources of data can contribute to illuminating the research question from different angles and thus provide a better understanding and insight into the complexity of the research question. The three articles are briefly summarized below. In the first article focus is directed towards integration of digital competence in curriculum documents for teacher education in Norway. The field was approached with the question: Which knowledge areas of digital competence are addressed in national and local curriculum documents, and how? A model inspired by the work of Zhao, Pugh, Sheldon and Byers (2002), as well as Krumsvik (2008), and Mishra and Koehler (2006) has been developed as an analytical framework. Teachers’ digital competence is here understood as comprising three knowledge areas: technology proficiency, pedagogical compatibility and social awareness. National guidelines and curriculum regulations, along with programme descriptions from 19 teacher education institutions have been analysed using this framework. The results of the study indicate that use of technology does not have a prominent position in curriculum documents. There are few binding learning outcomes for the integration of technology, suggesting that digital competence is still not regarded as an important component of teachers’ professional competence. The results of the analysis also reveal that programme descriptions from two of the teacher education institutions distinguish themselves from the others, representing opposite extremes with respect to technology integration; the first containing no examples of technology integration, not even the formulations found in the national curriculum documents, and the second, representing the opposite end of the scale with multiple examples. This may indicate that there still are substantial differences between institutions in terms of technology integration and how institutions influence pre-service teachers to use technology. These institutional variations may contribute to providing pre-service teachers with differing levels of knowledge of the use of technology in education, and thus enhance digital divides among graduates. Ultimately, this may in turn contribute to maintaining low levels of the educational use of ICT in schools. By clarifying the content of the concept “teachers’ digital competence” the article aims to contribute to increasing teacher educators’ awareness of which areas of knowledge they integrate into their curricula, what the goal of this knowledge is, and which strategies are best suited to help pre-service teachers acquire this knowledge. Based on the results of the first study, the second study is carried out as a multiple-case study with two cases. These cases are the two institutions that distinguished themselves from the rest in the analysis of the curriculum documents. The aim of the second article is to explore opportunities for appropriation of digital competence in teacher education. Focus is directed towards teacher educators’ and pre-service teachers’ perceptions and descriptions of digital competence, and how technology is being used and appropriated by teacher educators and pre-service teachers. The article is guided by the following research question: What opportunities for appropriation of digital competence does teacher education offer? The teacher educators who participated in the study all reported that they used digital tools both for preparations, in the office, at home, and in the classroom. They all reported to have sufficient access to the required technology, with the exception of interactive whiteboards. For this reason they did not feel confident using this technology in the classroom. Findings indicate that the same challenges are found in both institutions: the conflict between mastery and appropriation, and between personal and educational use of technology, and the resistance towards technology among some teacher educators. The results signify that in order to create opportunities for appropriation of digital competence and encourage use of technology as part of pre-service teachers’ professional didactic competence, technology should be better integrated as pedagogical tools for teaching and learning in all subjects in the teacher education programmes. The third article reports from data gathered though three national questionnaire surveys conducted among mentor teachers, teacher educators and pre-service teachers in Norway. The main research question in the article is: How is professional digital competence integrated in initial teacher education? The main research question is addressed through three sub-questions. The results of the study show that teacher educators and students score their own competence at about the same level, while teachers in schools report higher values for their competence. There are weak positive correlations between positive leadership, leadership support of instruction, and teacher educators’ digital competence, but stronger positive correlations between teacher educators’ self-reported efficacy and digital competence. It appears to be the case that digital competence is more of an individual factor than an organizational. Results are discussed in relation to teacher education’s role in qualifying for professional work in digital classrooms. Based on the findings in the three articles, the main contribution of this thesis is increased knowledge about how teacher education contributes to the development of pre-service teachers’ professional digital competence. The overall interpretation of the three studies is that there are only minor differences between the individual teacher education institutions in terms of integration of technology in curriculum documents, and teacher educators and pre-service teachers’ understanding of professional digital competence. Teacher educators, pre-service teachers and mentor teacher in all institutions score their own competence as relatively high. Nevertheless, the results indicate that pre-service teachers are less positive about their teachers as role models than the teacher educators themselves are. This may indicate that there still is a way to go before development of pre-service teachers’ professional digital competence is integrated in both the curriculum and the teaching practices of teacher education institutions.