Abstract:

Digital technology (DT) in everyday life have now been important tool for over three decades, and, due to the global pandemic, the use of DT and teachers’ and students’ digital competencies have become and continue to be the focus of attention. These days, the use of DT is taught in teacher education programs. Nevertheless, there are many teachers who graduated decades ago that have not been prepared to use DT in education in their teacher education studies. Therefore, teachers' professional development (TPD) focusing on the integration of digital technology is essential.

For schools which need support for teachers to improve their digital competence through the use of more DT in learning and, through this, develop students’ digital competence, a whole-school TPD program called “Digital accelerator” was developed. The aim of this research is to provide an overview of the 6-month training and mentoring program “Digital accelerator” and assess the program's impact according to the evaluations of the participants.

Change in digital culture and implementation of DT is supported in the program by four main parallel activities:
1. Educational technology mentoring (individual and group) for teachers and school management, varies between 35 and 80 academic hours based on the size of the school team.
2. Basic training (32 hours) for teachers who need more support in integrating DT into the learning process to develop students’ digital competence.
3. Advanced training (30 hours) for teachers, focuses on teachers who are more experienced in the field of DT addressing the specific topics based on school needs.
4. Digital leadership training (39 hours) for school management teams.

Besides these activities a virtual open and closing seminar was conducted, where all school teams can come together to create the sense of a learning community and acknowledge the achievements of the school teams. In addition, there is the possibility to participate in virtual tours of different digitally excelled schools.

In total, 92 teachers from five schools participated in the program. For assessing the program a sample was formed from 64 teachers (70% of participants), who took part in this program in the academic year 2021/22. The data were collected by post-questionnaire four months after the end of the program. The ratings of the Likert scale utilized in the questionnaire were analyzed using the statistical package SPSS Statistics 28.0.1.0 using descriptive statistics and non-parametric comparison tests and Spearman rank correlation.

The results indicated that, even though the program has an evidence-based whole-school approach with so-called tailored advanced training and individual mentoring, teachers assess the program as useful, but feel it does not specifically match their individual professional development goals. However, most of the participants considered that, in general, their confidence in using DT increased after completing the program. Supporting and hindering factors play important role, too, as these were related to the ratings of program as useful and meeting their needs. Based on the research results, trainers and developers of TPD programs could collect recommendations for elaborating programs, thus supporting the growth of DT skills of teachers.

Keywords:

Integration of digital technology, teachers' professional development, evaluation.