Abstract:

The integration of digital technologies into education urgently requires moving beyond an instrumental perspective toward a critical and reflective approach, a key challenge for citizenship in the post-digital era (Villar-Onrubia et al., 2022). Despite the consensus on its importance, and especially given the rapid expansion of generative artificial intelligence, there is growing concern about the lack of critical supervision and adequate training to address these new ethical and pedagogical challenges (Bozkurt et al., 2023).

This study aims to analyze the practices and strategies of seven secondary school teachers, identified as digital experts, to understand how they promote a critical use of technology in education. It employs learning ecologies as an analytical framework to unpack their professional development. The research adopts a qualitative multiple case study design within an interpretive paradigm. Participants were selected based on criteria of excellence in the critical pedagogical use of technologies.

Data collection triangulated in-depth semi-structured interviews with systematic observation of the teachers’ professional digital footprint (social media activity, conference presentations, dissemination work, etc.). The resulting information underwent rigorous thematic analysis, combining classical procedures with contemporary reflexive approaches (Braun & Clarke, 2022).

The results show that the capacity to foster critical digital competence is not an isolated technical skill, but emerges from the connection between teachers’ ethical reflection, ongoing self-directed learning, and active collaboration in teaching communities. The study concludes that, in order to replicate these successful practices, teacher training must go beyond technical instruction and provide spaces that nurture such complex and interconnected forms of reflection.

References:
[1] Bozkurt, Aras & Xiao, Frank & Lambert, Sarah & Pazurek, Angelica & Crompton, Helen & Koseoglu, Suzan & Farrow, Robert & Bond, Melissa & Nerantzi, Chrissi & Honeychurch, Sarah & Dron, Jon & Mir, Kamran & Stewart, Bonnie & Stewart, Bonnie & Costello, Eamon & Mason, Jon & Stracke, Christian & Romero-Hall, Enilda & [2] [2] Jandric, Petar. (2023). Speculative futures on ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence (AI): a collective reflection from the educational landscape. Asian Journal of Distance Education, 18(1), pp. 53-130. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7636568
[3] Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2022). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. SAGE Publications.
[4] Villar-Onrubia, D., Morini, L., Marín, V. I., & Nascimbeni, F. (2022). Critical digital literacy as a key for (post)digital citizenship: An international review of teacher competence frameworks. Journal of E-Learning and Knowledge Society, 18(3), 128–139. https://doi.org/10.20368/1971-8829/1135697

Keywords:

Generative artificial intelligence, Learning ecologies, Teacher education, Secondary education, Case study.