Abstract:

How do teachers and teacher educators work together to create Professional Digital Competence (PDC)? How is such a collaboration process perceived, moreover, what happens in a local school context? Furthermore, what is the role-performance and how is the collaboration organized and structured between teachers and teacher educators? These are the research questions (RQs) this abstract sets out to explore. Empirically, the proposed abstract will describe research from a design-based research project where a group of teachers and teacher educators collaborated on developing digital teaching environments by using Microsoft Class Teams (Teams) and OneNote Class Notebook (ONCN) at a lower secondary school in Norway. On a general level, this abstract is situated within a discussion on what digital competence means. Digital competence is often associated with a focus on digital tools or is understood as generic knowledges and skill, but these notions have recently been challenged. For example, educational researchers argue that digital competence can differ greatly from contexts and professions, which has for example led to the introduction of the concept of teachers’ PDC. To conceive how teachers and teacher educators collaborate and answer the RQs, the abstract will employ three sets of research streams. First, we apply a socio-cultural perspective on professional agency to understand collaborative processes in educational contexts. Second, the study aims at adding new knowledge to the emerging research on teachers’ Professional Digital Competence (PDC) in the Nordic countries. Third, it will provide new knowledge to the growing research on use of Teams and ONCN in education. According to our knowledge, we find few studies that explore how teachers in schools and teacher educators collaborate to develop digital competence together. The study uses a design-based research methodology with focus on a qualitative research strategy with emphasis on interviews. The project lasted from June until October 2020 and took place at a lower secondary school in Norway. During this period, a substantial amount of various data was collected, among other video recordings and group interviews which were part of the collaboration process between the teachers and teacher educators. The data has been transcribed and analysed according to various data analysis strategies. The findings indicate that the collaboration between teachers and teacher educators shows an uneven understanding of role-performance, status, and collaboration. For example, teachers perceive collaboration as beneficial and that there are different expectations in how to collaborate. Also, teachers have spontaneous ways of collaborating and teacher educators tend to be labelled more as “supervisors” rather than genuine co-collaborator. The meaning of digital competence among teachers is an ongoing discussion. This research contribution adds new knowledge to an emerging research stream that is particular for the Nordic countries; PDC. Also, the contribution explores the use of digital technologies which are widely used among teachers, Teams and ONCN.

Keywords:

Digital competence, teachers, collaboration, Teams.