Developing ICT in Teacher Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Developing ICT in Teacher Education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Research and innovation; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The Digital Competence in Teacher Education (DiCTE) project addressed the need for newly qualified student teachers to be able to integrate ICT in their teaching and aimed to collate data on student teachers’ digital competence.
The objectives of DiCTE were to
o identify student teachers’ levels of digital competence when entering teacher education and compare across the participating institutions
o identify and benchmark approaches used in the participating teacher education institutions to develop student teachers’ digital competence
o create methods for integrating digital competence in teacher education and facilitate the sharing of best practices
The participants in the DiCTE-project were from five European Universities: Oslo Metropolitan University (lead), University of Limerick, University of Malta, University of University of Oslo and Universitat de Valencia. All partners offer education programmes either for primary, secondary and post-secondary levels through the provision of undergraduate initial teacher education degrees, postgraduate Masters in education or a Masters in teaching and learning.
The first goal of the project involved a review of existing literature to identify the key issues in the field. This provided the project with an overview of different models defining digital competence for student teachers. The review highlighted that digital competence is a complex area. Through a synthesis of the key aspects gleaned from this task the literature review proposed a novel framework that encapsulated all the key areas identified in the review. This framework was named the PEAT model, an abbreviation of the four key dimensions: Pedagogical, Ethical, Attitudinal and Technological. The pedagogical dimensions relate to one’s knowledge and understanding of unique pedagogical practices afforded by technology in both specific subject areas and broader ‘professional’ educational practices that transcend subject or classroom use. Ethical dimensions relate to the broad range of cyber-ethics issues that teachers need to be aware of, for example, privacy, copyright and source awareness. The attitudinal dimension relates to one’s openness to explore new and emerging technologies and their potential in education. The technical dimension relates to one’s knowledge and understanding of essential aspects related to digital technology. These four dimensions of the PEAT model provided the foundations for the structure of the student questionnaire and an overall guiding framework for the development of the project. (For further information on the PEAT model: https://dicte.oslomet.no/peat/ and to access the literature review: https://dicte.oslomet.no/
The various conceptualisations of digital competence that emerged from the literature were particularly important in the development of the survey tool. The survey tool was designed to identify student teachers’ levels of digital competence when entering teacher education. A report describing the process of developing the questionnaire (survey tool), and the rationale behind both the questions, structure and content as well as a record of the decisions taken in its design was developed in addition to the survey tool. The survey tool is available at: https://dicte.oslomet.no/
The survey was conducted three times during the project period and revised after each round accordingly. Data collected was used to benchmark and compare across the participating institutions.
The third output of the project was to identify effective technology integration practices in the participating institutions. Having selected particularly innovative and effective practices, these were shared with the project partners. To facilitate this sharing, a template was developed to streamline the presentations of different practices and make them easily comparable. A report describing this and the team’s reflections on this process was also developed. The report is available at: https://dicte.oslomet.no/
There are several long-term benefits to the DiCTE project. For the teacher education sector, the development of the PEAT model is a significant contribution to the field as it attempts to synthesise the key dimensions of teachers’ digital competence in a manner that is easily accessible to all teacher educators. In this way, DiCTE has made a notable contribution to the debate and development of our understanding of student teachers’ professional digital competence. This contribution is not only reflected in the published reports from the project but also through dissemination of the project’s work at conferences and notable scientific publications. There are also long-term benefits for the project partners. The project has raised the importance of technology integration to a more prominent level in the participating institutions. The sharing of practices has facilitated a cross-pollination of ideas which has led to greater innovation at a programme level in the respective institutions.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 160194 Eur

Project Coordinator

OSLOMET – STORBYUNIVERSITETET & Country: NO

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
• UNIVERSITA TA MALTA
• UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK
• UNIVERSITAT DE VALENCIA