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Improving pre-service teachers’ digital competence: Scenarios for a blended future
Speakers: A/Prof. Sarah Howard and Prof. Jo Tondeur
Abstract: In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the field of education has undergone a massive shift from face-to-face to online and blended learning. This has provided a challenging but at the same time interesting opportunity for teachers from all educational levels to reconsider their educational practice. The difficulty of this was that many teachers had very little or no experienced teaching online. In this keynote, we will unpack how a person-centered approach can be used to develop the digital competencies of pre-service teachers for online and blended learning practice. Therefore, we will first consider pre-service teacher profiles in relation to readiness to teach online, including individual and institutional factors, to consider what support is needed to teach online in a range of educational contexts. We will then present scenarios of how to best design teacher training to be responsive to different profiles in the development of digital competence for a blended future. This is an important consideration in the field, because teaching online is not only in the short-term to manage COVID-19. It is also important to consider the long-term goals of providing better support to integrate online and blended learning approaches in different educational contexts.