TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN LATVIA: ARE E-COMPETENCES INCLUDED?

Kristine Uzule

doi:10.3846/bme.2020.12631

Abstract

Purpose – the purpose of this research is to review the contents of Latvian teacher training and education programs in order to identify if the development of students’ e-competences is included into these programs as an important objective and value. The importance of the development of these competences has been stressed in various EU documents and scientific literature. The scientific importance of the paper lies in gathering evidence for the inclusion of e-competences into teacher training and education curricula and demonstrating that e-competences have not yet acquired a value status in teacher training and education programs. Research methodology – the methodology included the keyword in context and concordance analysis of self-assessment reports and program descriptions, which were run in the software AntConc. Findings – out of 190,000 word tokens, the KWIC analysis identified only 75 entries related to e-competences, most of which included basic skills of information and communication technologies. Other more advanced concepts, such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, adaptive spaces, e-competences, e-education and e-learning, were hardly mentioned. Research limitations – one limitation of this research is the focus on Latvian teacher training and education programs without their comparison to similar European programs, which would allow for determining the competitiveness of such Latvian programs in Europe. Practical implications – the obtained results suggest that the development of e-competences has not been perceived as value in teacher training and education programs in Latvia, and in order to bridge this gap, programming and artificial intelligence courses should be introduced into the curricula of such programs. Originality/Value – the research has demonstrated that the EU aim of boosting the competitiveness of the European education through the development of e-competences is yet to be implemented into teacher training and education programs in Latvia.

Highlights

Much of human life, including education and business activities, has moved to e-platforms and the recent Covid-19 crisis has proven it with many countries in the world having fully moved to e-learning both in school and higher education teaching
Do teacher training and education programs, not focusing on computer or engineering or similar areas, have computer and data analysis competences and knowledge, in other words, e-competences, embedded in their programs as the skills that need to be developed in teacher trainees, in particular in their curricula and course descriptions? The aim of this paper is to review current teacher training and education programs in order to determine if these areas have been incorporated into these programs
The fact that 75 KWIC items were identified in the collected corpus points to that fact that university programs in education and teacher training in Latvia have been designed with the awareness of the importance of the development of computer skills in their students

Summary

Introduction

Much of human life, including education and business activities, has moved to e-platforms and the recent Covid-19 crisis has proven it with many countries in the world having fully moved to e-learning both in school and higher education teaching. Such an education mode requires a particular set of competences from students and from teachers, as the e-learning environment, be it the main or complementary mode of education, is characterized by its unique features and principles of operation pertaining to more advanced digital skills and the knowledge of the rudiments of computer-human interaction, which both constrain and expand teacher opportunities to conduct teaching effectively. The computer-human interaction process is complex and to make it more productive, students should receive sufficient and regular training because more individual experience with computers has been found to decrease computer anxiety (Eryilmaz & Cigdemoglu, 2018)

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