Abstract
The increasing availability of new technologies in an ever more digitalized world has gained momentum in practically all spheres of life, making technology-related skills a key competence not only in professional settings. Thus, schools assume responsibility for imparting these skills to their students, and hence to future generations of professionals. In so doing, teachers play a key role with their competences in using new technologies constituting an essential prerequisite for the effective implementation of such skills. As models of school development and school effectiveness found teacher professionalization to be a key element with regards to student achievement as well as teachers’ in-class use of new technology, the present research project conducts secondary analyses using data from the IEA International Computer and Information Literacy Study 2013 (ICILS 2013) regarding internal and external teacher professionalization. Particular emphasis is placed on the implementation of new technologies in class in a comparison between the education systems of Germany and the Czech Republic. A Latent Class Analysis serves the purpose of establishing a teacher typology with regards to technology-related professional development. This typology is subsequently used for further analyses of additional factors that show a correlation with the teachers’ use of computers in class. These include the teachers’ ICT self-efficacy and their emphasis on teaching ICT skills. The results show two different types of teachers across both countries. Teachers who participate in professional development use computers more frequently in class, put more emphasis on teaching ICT skills and have a stronger sense of ICT self-efficacy. When comparing teachers in Germany and the Czech Republic, teachers in Germany who participate in professional development consider themselves more ICT self-efficient, while teachers in the Czech Republic use computers more often and put more emphasis on teaching ICT skills compared with their colleagues in Germany.
Highlights
New technologies have come to play a significant role in the individual’s participation in society, providing access to information and knowledge in what is commonly referred to as the digital age (Fraillon et al 2014, p. 3; cf. Davis et al 2013)
While the cross-sectional design of the study does not allow for the interpretation of causal relationships between professionalization and the selected indicators, the results show an overall clear tendency that teachers in Germany have more absolute approaches to professional development, given the fact that the German teacher sample is only subdivided into two groups
Teachers in the Czech Republic show more diversified approaches to professional development, whereas teachers in Germany can be allocated to groups that are either skeptical or have a tendency towards internal professional development
Summary
New technologies have come to play a significant role in the individual’s participation in society, providing access to information and knowledge in what is commonly referred to as the digital age (Fraillon et al 2014, p. 3; cf. Davis et al 2013). New technologies have come to play a significant role in the individual’s participation in society, providing access to information and knowledge in what is commonly referred to as the digital age Statistics show, that teachers in Germany have participated in external professional development activities significantly less frequently than the international average: the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) International Computer and Information Literacy Study 2013 (ICILS) showed that a mere 18% of German teachers have participated in external training on the integration of new technologies into teaching and learning, while the international average is 43% In the domain of internal professional development, teachers in the Czech Republic indicate collaborating with their colleagues to develop ICT-based lessons in 36% of cases, while collaboration in this area among teachers in Germany amounts to a mere 12% (cf. Fraillon et al 2014, p. 181)
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