Why rethinking teaching competence for the digital world?

Abstract

This article analyses the most impacting institutional models of digital teaching competence, and critically addresses three characteristics common to all of them, understood as deficiencies in their approach. Firstly, they do not explicitly start from a model of teaching action, and implicitly reduce the teaching function to the classroom performance, avoiding aspects such as social and political commitment, or the role of the school in community development. Secondly, they are based on a taxonomic vision of the concept of competence, ignoring the complexity of the different contexts in which competence is carried on and developed, as well as its role in the construction of teacher identity, something that socio-material and holistic approaches do include. Thirdly, they are based on an instrumentalist vision of technology as a neutral tool in values and, on the contrary, on a deterministic conception of the relationship between technology and society. Finally, we present a model that we have called "Integral Teaching Competence for the digital world", specifically designed for basic education, which is the subject of a more ambitious research.