Digital skills as a basis for TPCK

Abstract

Pupils in today's elementary and secondary schools are in need totally different skills than 40 years ago. When they finish school, they must deal with technology-dense communities that are more complex than previously and continuously changing. This places new demands on schools and their teachers. TPCK is a suitable model to describe the skills teachers need to provide adequate teaching for their students‘ future. This paper presents results from research on newly qualified teachers about their digital literacy, their use of ICT in their work practices and various factors that may affect this. The survey focused particularly on teacher education. In this paper, I argue that teachers‘ (and students‘) need for digital user skills are undervalued and under communicated with regards to pedagogical and content knowledge. The paper concludes that the emphasis on digital skills in teacher education will lead to graduated teachers having the ability to use technology intensively in their teaching and learning facilitation; in other words, they have TPCK.