Digital Literacy, Employability and Graduate Attributes for Primary Trainee Teachers

Abstract for ITTE conference: Following the presenters’ recent book Digital Literacy for Primary Teachers, the authors have commenced an 18-month project to explore the relationship between employability and digital literacy from multiple perspectives. The presentation will provide an overview of the project’s four stages and outline progress so far. We will also focus on how we will use these insights to improve the experience of trainee and experienced teachers with whom we work. In particular we will report on phase 1 in which we re-examined the drivers including; the Computing National Curriculum Programmes of Study (DfE 2014); the Higher Education Review Group Themes for 2015-2016 (QAA) and institutional measures to embed student digital literacy development opportunities within courses. We then matched particular elements of our previous work using a simple model of values, dispositions and capabilities to underline the limitations of viewing digital literacy as narrow set of skills to be attained. We exemplified the model with a employability focus which includes scrutinising elements implied (or not) in the Teachers’ Standards, inspection guidance, graduate attributes and popular digital literacy models from the UK as well as the global context related to the key tools a 21st Century teacher needs. This is very much an open and practice-based project and we welcome collaborators- details on how to become involved will be shared in our session