Contextual and Organisational Factors in the Development of Teachers' Digital Competence

Teacher's digital competence is a key aspect in the European Commission's Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027, which stresses the importance of improving the use of digital technology for teaching and learning in Europe's schools. Moreover, with the current COVID-19 pandemic, teachers have generally needed to increase their digital competence to make a successful shift to online distance learning to some degree. This switch poses contextual difficulties for school communities (e.g. limited access to suitable infrastructure) but also raises personal/professional challenges for teachers, especially lack of confidence and training in using digital technologies effectively. So with the turbulence pervading education systems in Europe, supporting teachers' digital competence development is a vital issue, especially given many schools' ongoing struggle to keep pace with accelerating evolution in digital technologies. Critically, they face increasing demands to prepare students to become effective lifelong learners able to thrive in ever-changing, digitally-rich knowledge societies. So teachers' digital-oriented professional development is inexorably entwined with contextual evolution. In this light, the European Commission is currently developing a tool called "SELFIE for Teachers" to foster development of teachers' digital competence through self-reflection. The tool is based on the DigCompEdu Framework and is designed to help teachers reflect on and further their use of digital technologies. SELFIE for Teachers is currently set for official piloting in four Member States following pre-pilot testing in Italy and Portugal. This paper presents teachers' insights that emerged during the qualitative follow-up study performed following pre-piloting activities in Italy, in particular teachers' perception of contextual and organisational factors in the development of digital competence in teaching, as expressed by 17 primary and 20 secondary teachers. Overall, both primary and secondary teachers considered schools' limited digital infrastructure as a factor inhibiting their opportunities to reach higher levels of digital proficiency. As in any other profession, individual capacity development is intertwined with organizational strategies and elements offered by the context in which teachers operate. The other perceived conditioning factor was that more advanced digital activities can be strongly connected to specific roles customarily performed at school, i.e. teaching staff can feel reticent to try out advanced digital strategies and tools beyond a basic level unless they have a particular institutional role or mandate to do so. Given these outcomes, the paper discusses the influence of contextual factors and institutional organization on potential advancement in teachers' digital competence.