Evaluación de la competencia digital de futuros docentes para el uso seguro y responsable de Internet

Résumé

Digital competence in teaching focuses on the learning, practice and use of technology in the teaching profession. It is a competence in which those who train others bring into action a series of cognitive, practical and attitudinal skills towards and for the use of technology. Its appropriation enables classroom practice to be carried out in accordance with the needs that the digital society demands in the training of digitally responsible citizens. It is considered a key factor for teaching and other educational functions, and after the COVID 19 pandemic it has been consolidated as a fundamental pillar for current and future education. Until recently, most research on the digital competence of prospective teachers or student teachers has looked at the five areas of digital competence in the European framework in a generic and integrated way. This research focuses on a little-studied area whose common thread is the security area of digital competence. It adopts an educational approach oriented towards the appropriation of knowledge, skills and attitudes for a more responsible use of the Internet, as a key aspect to improve awareness and alleviate many problems generated by the use of technology. Its general purpose is to approach and expand their knowledge by assessing the digital competence of future teachers in aspects related to the safe and responsible use of the Internet. It is a research with exploratory and descriptive studies that analyse how future teachers perceive, know, practice and appropriate the knowledge, skills and attitudes to improve in this competence area. For this purpose, previous studies, indicators from the framework of digital competence in teaching of the National Institute of Educational Technology for teacher training (INTEF) of Spain and other reference frameworks are used. In order to achieve this purpose, four studies are carried out involving a total of 824 teacher degree students. From it, four specific objectives are set out, aimed at assessing digital competence on safe and responsible use of the Internet and exploring the current state of future teachers’ training in the field of digital safety. A mixed approach with both qualitative and quantitative design and instruments is used. The fulfilment of objectives has resulted in an overview of the topic, the published results of which are presented in this thesis in the format of collection of articles. The first publication is a systematic review based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviewers and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement which seeks to identify the presence of safety-related evaluation and study indicators. The analysis of 31 publications selected from the three most important scientific databases in educational research shows results that confirm the relevance of this research and the different approaches used in previous studies to assess this area of competence, ranging from the mere self-perception of future teachers to intervention designs for their training in this area. With a cross-sectional and descriptive study, the second publication assesses — by means of a questionnaire of its own design — the competence levels of 317 student teachers in Spain and Portugal. The results allow us to identify three levels of competence: digitally safe teachers, teachers at medium risk and teachers at digital risk. Each with very particular characteristics in terms of knowledge, practices and attitudes towards indicators related to safe and responsible use of the Internet. Although most of the participants are at the high level in all seven dimensions, within these dimensions, important differences can be observed, such as in health protection, digital identity management, online behaviour and data protection. The results analysed with different statistical analyses show that the competence level in all cases can be improved and that training is a necessary and demanded measure. Of the four dimensions of the security area of digital competence in teaching (CDD), data protection is the issue that has gained the most attention and concern in the educational field since 2017, especially due to the processing of children’s data and sensitive data collected in schools. The aim of the third publication is based on this. This study based on a purposebuilt questionnaire describes the levels of risk perception and knowledge that prospective teachers have about the protection of personal data in education. The results show, among other things, a high perception of risk in practices where personal data are exposed on the Internet and also a lack of knowledge about the type of data of children and their families that can be shared and processed. The lack of training and information emerges as an important conclusion from which suggestions for necessary actions in this respect are derived. The fourth publication proposes the design of an educational intervention whose general purpose was to describe the self-perception of future teachers of their competence in digital safety. The results confirm that most of them say that both men and women have an intermediate level. On the other hand, in the evaluation of their experience in the workshop, they offer positive opinions about the activities carried out, which have allowed them to reflect on and experience situations associated with close and familiar problems. Even those who reported knowledge and safe use of technology and the Internet recognised the need, as future educators, for better training in this area. In general, both men and women reported having information and strategies and being better prepared for their future educational practices. The results of the four publications lead to conclusions about the research carried out and open up new lines of research that will expand knowledge about the safe and responsible use of the Internet in the field of teacher training (which can be extended to higher education and citizenship as a whole), as well as recognising limitations of different types to which this research has been subject.