Technological literacy for teachers

Abstract

Ongoing developments in educational technologies place increasing demands on teachers who have to make decisions on a daily basis concerning how, when, and where to make use of technologies in classrooms. Building on results from the Danish project Technucation, this paper argues that there is a marked need for a teacher-specific version of the technological literacy developed by the International Technology Education Association (ITEA). ITEA defines technological literacy as the ability to ‘use, manage, assess, and understand technology’. The Technucation project found that teachers were not simply in need of knowledge about how to manage technical challenges, they would also benefit from awareness of how new technologies change relations, identities, and complex power structures. The paper explicitly addresses this issue of the new skills and analytic capabilities that teachers need in order to engage effectively with technological development. The type of enhanced technological literacy teachers may benefit from is represented in the paper through its presentation of the TECS-model, developed in the course of the Technucation project: hands-on skills in handling Technology (T); capability to analyse changes in Engaged relationships (E); capability to analyse Complex power-informed pathways (C); and capability to analyse long-term Shifts in professional identities (S). The paper argues that attention to all of these areas should be included in the education of technological literacy to pre-service teachers.

Keywords:

• Educational technologies
• technological literacy
• human–technology interactions
• digital natives
• educational inequality

Acknowledgements

To all the participants, researchers and informants, as well as the Strategic Research Council in Denmark, thank you for making the Technucation project possible.

Notes

1. Nurses’ pre-service education was also included in this project, but it is left out of the argumentation here as the focus is on teachers’ need for technological literacy. It was, however, also concluded in Technucation that nurses also need an enhanced technological literacy in order to perform skilfully, and that future pre-service nurses are not necessarily digital natives.

2. Only 149 interviews were conducted, but in one interview two informants were interviewed together.