Teachers’ digital competences and the curriculum

Aim: the paper at hand has four aims. Firstly, it examines teachers’ own understanding of the term digital competence. Secondly, a closer look is taken at how teachers assess their own digital competence. For this purpose, the term digital competence was divided into three aspects: technical, didactical and theoretical competences all of which shed a different light on the main term digital competence but are equally important in the implementation of digital competence in successful teaching and as according to the changes made to the Swedish curriculum in 2018. Thirdly, this paper tries to investigate how often digital competence and digital tools and media are implemented in language teaching and fourthly, a look is taken at what digital tools and media are at the teachers’ disposal and how their use is applied. Design/methods/ approach: Empirical study made with the help of an online questionnaire which was sent do different secondary schools in Sweden inviting language teachers to participate. The answers given in the survey are analysed and quantitatively and qualitatively presented. The results found are discussed and compared with other recent literature and research papers in the field of ICT and digital competence in teaching. Findings: according to the results, the author of this paper found that the teachers who participated in this study have a very varied understanding of the term digital competence. The definitions given reflect the terms complexity and the individual relations to the term itself and what importance is given to the digital tools and media associated. When asked to assess their own digital competences, which were divided into technical, didactical and theoretical digital competences, the participating teachers gave their own competences a generally high rating. Nevertheless, differences can be noted and the assessment, although generally high for all the competences involved, does show a falling curve in which the participants rate their technical digital competence at the highest and their theoretical digital competence at the lowest. According to the results analysed, digital tools and media are implemented in teaching on a regular and even daily basis and teachers generally have a broad variety of tools and media at their disposal. However, the study shows that the frequent use of these tools does not seem to have had an impact or changed the basic way they are applied in language teaching. A comparison with earlier studies and literature shows that a lack of methods may be the reason for the stagnation of development in this field