Conceptual approaches to the identification of teachers’ digital competence: cognitive modelling

Abstract

The need for developing a teacher’s digital competency requires the creation of a fundamental scientific base for the process of training teachers and their professional development to enable them to work in the context of digitization of general education. In the Covid-19 pandemic, global transformations are taking place in the field of education. All regions of Russia have switched completely into remote mode. According to Interfax, based on the research of the Higher School of Economics NRU, the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is the best in Russia in terms of technical equipment for teachers and schoolchildren today. This study covered 22,600 teachers in 73 regions of the country. In Yakutia 61% of teachers conduct online learning, while the average in Russia is 25%. However, the common problem across all regions is that teachers, schoolchildren and their parents lack psychological readiness for a complete transition to digital education. This explains the emerging situation of conflict, background stress, as well as frequent cases of imitative distance education and e-learning. In this regard, there is a need to discuss the problems facing education in the digitization process and the need to overcome them. This paper analyses the current situation in school education in the context of digitization and a universal transition to online learning. Graduate students of the NEFU Institute for Continuing Professional Education conducted a survey of teachers and school leaders. This was aimed at identifying attitudes towards the process of digitization of school education and ownership of ICT, and some digital competencies of teachers and educational leaders. The results confirmed the relevance of the research problem and revealed the most acute contradictions associated with the lack of digital competencies among teachers in Yakutia. The study examined modern conceptual approaches to the digitization of education, the identification of digital competencies of teachers, and the development of objective measurement tools. A digital teacher competency map is being developed, with a toolkit that integrates key competencies of the digital economy and digital competencies, together with tester program (a digital simulator) to identify the formation of: (a) a set of the teacher’s core competencies in the digital economy and (b) a set of teachers’ digital competencies. The following factors were taken into account in developing the tools: conceptual approaches in modern scientific and pedagogical research to identify, identify and assess the level of formation of digital competencies of a modern teacher; methodological substantiation of cognitive modeling of the competencies studied; assumptions of the most optimal combinations of key and digital competencies for teachers of different subject areas and levels of education; interconnection and interdependence of some professional deficits associated with a deficit of key and digital competencies.