Teacher educators’ need continuing pedagogical support in digital teaching

The aim of this study was to identify teacher educators' use of digital tools and needs of digital competence in higher education. The research questions were: a) How do teacher educators use digital tools and evaluate their competence to effectively practice ICT in teaching situations? b) What training do teacher educators need to make students functional online? The findings of the study are intended to help teacher educators to better meet the needs and challenges students encounter in their education and to influence and design online-based learning activities supported with different digital tools in higher education programs. Research shows that digital tools for pedagogical purposes is still poorly integrated in teacher education programs and there is a need for innovative solutions as an important part of teachers professional competence of using ICT for students learning (Tømte et al., 2015). Moreover, teacher educators have a fundamental role in training teachers for teaching and serve as role models for ICT-based teaching (Ungar & Baruch, 2016). According to Koehler et al. (2013) digital technologies, by contrast to traditional pedagogical technologies, are protean (i.e. usable in many different ways), unstable (rapidly changing) and opaque (the inner workings are hidden from users). The use of technology also needs to be developed professionally by tutoring and underlying educational pedagogy (Lakkala & Ilomäki, 2015) as well as to enhance understanding of the skills, dispositions, and knowledge for teaching-learning contexts where information and communication technologies are increasingly pivotal (Forbes & Khoo, 2015). The current study includes both quantitate and qualitative data from a digital survey with closed-ended questions, and open-ended questions from two faculties including teacher educaters at two different universities in Sweden. 105 respondents participated (26%). Two theoretical foundations are applied to analyse different aspects of the teachers’ use and need of ICT knowledge and competence: 1) The TPACK model and the interaction between the three knowledge domains: pedagogical knowledge, technical knowledge and content knowledge (Koehler, Mishra & Cain, 2013), and 2) three dimensions of Computer Self-Efficacy (CSE); magnitude, strength and generalizability (Compeau & Higgins, 1995). Results show that all teacher educators in our study use digital tools in planning and executing teaching. However, teacher educators do not use digital tools primarily for pedagogical purposes, and thus need extensive pedagogical support in creating digital teaching and learning environments, as well as to identify the pedagogical surplus value in their own teaching and learning context, in order to increase motivation for training of concrete, effective and subject-oriented successful examples presented by peers. The main conclusions that ought to be relevant and applicable for teacher educators worldwide are that; a) since the teacher educators do not use digital tools primarily for pedagogical purposes, extensive and continuing pedagogical support is needed in the field of creating digital teaching and learning environments; b) teacher educators need to identify the pedagogical surplus value in their own teaching and learning context with digital tools, in order to increase motivation for concrete, effective and subject-oriented successful examples presented by experienced teachers. References Compeau, D. R. & Higgins, C. A. (1995). Computer Self-Efficacy: Development of a Measure and Initial Test. MIS Quartely, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 189-211. Forbes, D. & Khoo, E. (2015). Voice over distance: a case of podcasting for learning in online teacher education. Distance Education, 36(3), 335-350. Koehler, M. J., Mishra, P. & Cain, W. (2013). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK)? Journal of Education, 13-19. Lakkala, M., & Ilomäki, L. (2015). A case study of developing ICT-supported pedagogy through a collegial practice transfer process. Computers & Education, 90, 1-12. Tømte, C., Enochsson, A. B., Buskqvist, U. & Kårstein, A. (2015). Educating online student teachers to master professional digital competence: The TPACK-framework goes online. Computers & Education, 84, 26-35. Ungar, O. A. & Baruch, A. F. (2016). Perceptions of teacher educators regarding ICT implementation. Interdisciplinary Journal of e-Skills and Life Long Learning, 12, 279-296