Thinking on Teaching Competence for a Digital World

For some months now, in informal conversations with other colleagues and, more in depth with my friends Francesc Esteve and Jordi Adell, we have been thinking about the idea that the definition of Teaching Digital Competence (hereinafter TDC), as it is proposed in most of the available models, left us with too many “unfinished ideas”…

Basically, we believed – we still believe – that the existing TDC models are based on a vision of what is digital competence (generic), that is used as fundamentals, and on top, pedagogy is “spread” as a layer (like butter)… but definitively in a too thin layer. As a result, these models – and their developments – are guilty of three main evils at least:

  • They do not understand teaching action as an integral action beyond the performance of the classroom.
  • They have a reduced and reductionist view of technology
  • They do not make explicit the type of competence model that underlies them, and if they do, they tend to coincide with models of mangerialism models, rather than integral development ones.

So we decided to work on these ideas and, in addition to a more in-depth analysis of existing CDD models, we would like proposing at least a first outline of what a Model of Teaching Competence for the Digital World would be. That is to say, a model that understands that the base is the teaching action and on it, is “spread” (to follow with the metaphor) the technology by all the corners, and in its wider perspective.

As a result of these joint thoughts, we have written two papers that have just been published and that I would like to share with you today. I know they are just in Spanish (we hope continue working on it in English in the near future), but if you are interested, I’m sure translator could help you (I’m open for chats too :-)).

Every comment and suggestion is welcome….