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and Attitudes: An Empirical Study on the DigCompEdu Framework
3.1 Rationale of the Empirical Study
teachers as resistant to technology?Despite the importance of improving teachers’ digital competence emphasized internationally in policy documents such as the DigCompEdu framework, the expected educational revolution might still and often be waiting to occur. Teaching practitioners are frequently branded as “resistant to technology, Luddites and risk-averse” and seem to be under a more general suspicion of failing to achieve success in improving teaching and learning with digital technologies (Howard & Mozejko 2015: 311). The discrepancy between the policymaking and teachers’ resistance has been documented by research (Tallvid 2016; Watty et al. 2016; Kamilah & Anugerahwati 2017), and there is an established gap between policies and the actual use of digital technologies in teaching and learning (Madsen et al. 2018). It would be too short-sighted, however, to simply blame teachers for their alleged deficiencies, as other factors also play a decisive role for the digital turn in education, including school equipment and access to further training opportunities. Indeed, the empirical study will show that any claim related to teachers’ resistance to technology needs critical challenging.
Yet, it must be emphasized that the effectiveness of implementing information and communication technology (ICT) in schools may rely on “how well teachers and future teachers are able to implement and use ICT in an effective and appropriate manner for teaching and learning” (Røkenes & Krumsvik 2014), apart from students’ digital competence. A study conducted by Krumsvik et al. (2013, cited in Røkenes & Krumsvik 2014) involving 17,529 students and 2,524 teachers in Norwegian secondary schools found that teachers’ digital competence and students’ learning outcomes are strongly correlated. This study highlights the importance of the teacher as a role model with regard to digital competence, and it further implies that the development of digital competence in student teachers needs to begin during their teacher education.
the role of attitudes and self-efficacyApart from having digital skills, research indicates that teachers need to have positive attitudes toward technologies and experience self-efficacy in using them to become self-confident users and role models for students (Milbrath & Kinzie 2000). Research has also shown that the actual behavior of using technology is positively influenced by the attitude toward it as well as by the individual’s self-perceptions of their competence (Yeung et al. 2012: 1319). Although the DigCompEdu provides a good framework for teachers to self-evaluate their digital competence, it barely addresses the relationship between student teachers’ self-perceptions of digital competence and their actual attitudes toward digital technologies as well as the possible factors influencing their attitudes.
In this regard, the study presented here aims to fill this gap and advance the understanding of research in future students’ expertise and attitudes toward digital technologies (DT) in EFL education. Specifically, the following three research questions (RQ) are being sought:
RQ 1: What are the general attitudes and the degree of their perceived digital competence of student teachers toward the use of digital technologies in ELT?
RQ 2: What are the relationships between the self-perceptions of student teachers’ digital competence and their attitudes toward digital technologies?
RQ3: To what extent do factors including age, gender, school types, and teaching experience influence the attitudes of student teachers toward DT?
3.2 Design, Make-up, and Context of the Study
designing the questionnaireWhen second language teachers and researchers survey opinions, beliefs, and attitudes, they tend to make use of Likert-type scales (DeVellis 1991). Since the purpose of the present research is to explore future teachers’ attitudes and their self-reports of their digital competence, a questionnaire based on Likert-type scales was designed (Figure 1).
Example of using Likert-type scales in the questionnaire
The questionnaire consisted of three sections: (1) self-perceptions of student teachers’ digital competence, (2) student teachers’ attitudes toward digital technologies and (3) demographics. The total number of items is 52. Each of the first two sections was made up of 22 6-point Likert scale items (1=Completely Agree, 2=Mostly Agree, 3=Slightly Agree, 4=Slightly Disagree, 5=Mostly Disagree, 6=Completely Disagree). We did not adopt the commonly used Likert scale with 5 or 7 responses with a neutral midpoint, because a 6-point Likert scale tends to have a higher degree of discrimination and reliability than a 5-point one (Chomeya 2010) and increases measurement precision. By way of having no middle category, respondents are urged to make a decision outside of the frequently preferred middle ground, which could reduce the production of construct-irrelevant variance (Nemoto & Beglar 2014). Items in the first two sections are based on six constructs and 4 constructs respectively which will be presented in 3.3. The order of the items was mixed up to avoid monotony and participants’ unconscious tendency to repeat their previous choices. The third section of the questionnaire mainly included demographic information such as gender, age, and years of receiving pre-service or in-service teacher education.
conducting the surveyThis study was first piloted using the print versions of the questionnaire in an advanced TEFL seminar on Oct. 16th, 2019 with 16 participants from a university in Bavaria. According to the feedback in terms of clarity, format, and length, the questionnaire was revised and transferred into a digital version by using https://www.wjx.cn/, which is an online website to create questionnaires. Then the official survey was conducted by asking student teachers to scan the QR code or type in the link generated by the website in two lectures on Nov. 5th, 2019 as well as in a seminar on Nov. 19th, 2019. The preliminary analysis of the collected data was shown to the student teachers near the end of the lectures as incentives for their research participation. The number of valid responses is 181.
3.3 Explaining the Constructs of the Questionnaire
digital competence: constructsThe 22 items concerning perceived digital competence in the first section were constructed in consonance with the six dimensions stated in the DigCompEdu framework that have been introduced above. The questionnaire items were grouped in six constructs as follows:
Professional Engagement
w7. I can use digital technologies to collaborate with others, such as sharing English teaching ideas using Dropbox.
w8. I use digital sources and resources for my professional development in my teacher training, such as attending online lectures or watching online tutorials.
w16. I can critically reflect on my own digital English teaching practice.
Digital Resources
w1. I can create new digital educational resources.
w3. I can implement digital devices and resources in the English teaching process.
w4. I can correctly apply privacy and copyright rules when using digital resources.
w11. I can modify digital educational resources.
w13. I can select appropriate digital resources for English teaching and learning.
Teaching and Learning
w12. I can use digital technologies to encourage