Abstract:

This study is a part of research project on the Development of Digital Literacy (DL) Skills for Smart Teaching of Junior High School Teachers in North-eastern of Thailand, under the Smart Learning Innovation Project, a large-scale academic research and service of Khon Kaen University. It is aimed at investigating the level of DL skills of junior high school teachers of Mathematics, Science and English subjects in 208 schools involved in the project. These teachers were expected to have DL skills at a level that will enhance their classroom teaching effectiveness in a digital environment, which is called “smart teaching”. The study used a quantitative research approach, with questionnaires for collecting data from a sample of 504 teachers in the project. The questionnaire comprised of 16 self-assessment questions in 4 DL domains, and was developed by adopting the DL framework of Aviram and Eshet-Alkalai (2006). The finding revealed that teachers have DL skills in each domain at a moderate level as follows: digital citizenship (x̄=2.96), information skills (x̄=2.84), communication skills (x̄=2.77) and reproduction skills (x̄=2.73) respectively. Among 16 sub-skills, it was found that teachers have all DL skills at a moderate level, of which the top three skills were: 1) being a role model for students in using media and digital technology ethically (x̄=3.12), 2) having the ability to use digital technology in conformity with law, security and accountability (x̄=2.97), and 3) having the ability to express a positive attitude in using digital technology for supporting collaboration and learning development (x̄=2.93); the last skill with the lowest average score was having the ability to use technology in creating digital media for teaching of the course content (x̄=2.65).

Keywords:

Digital Literacy, Junior High School Teachers, Smart teaching, Digital Learning Environment, Smart Learning, North-eastern Thailand.