The education process has started to go beyond the traditional patterns with topics such as new teaching environment designs blended with technology, digital native learners, and the prominent competencies of the 21st century. At the center of these concepts, which have begun to transform education, teachers are in an important position that ensures the continuation of education system. In education systems changed by technology, it is known that teachers' digital competencies will affect the success of learners. Teachers who can be digitally competent will be more active in managing the process more effectively in the education of digital native generations. As the difficulties faced by teachers who are not digitally competent in the changing teaching process with the effect of technology will bring new problems for the education process, it is important to determine the digital competence levels of the teachers and to create action plans and policies. In this chapter, it is emphasized what the digital competencies of teachers are and why teachers should have digital competencies. The education process has started to go beyond the traditional patterns with topics such as new
TopIntroduction
It is possible to say that there is a difference between 'being a teacher' and 'being a teacher in the digital world', as the necessity of integrating the digital age into the field of education is becoming more and more felt every day (Gündüzalp, 2021a). Technological change forces educators to develop teaching activities that will develop their own digital competencies and equip all students with the competencies needed to succeed in the digital world (Hämäläinen et al., 2021). In addition, all educators have the responsibility to develop their digital competencies, improve them over time, and incorporate the knowledge, skills and attitudes adopted into their education processes (Tretinjak & Anđelić, 2016).
Considering the challenges presented by new technologies to teachers, teaching with technology becomes even more complex (Koehler, et al., 2013). New digital technologies, which are inherently volatile, unstable and opaque, present new challenges to teachers struggling to use more technology in their teaching (Koehler, & Mishra, 2009). While teachers are trying to cope with these challenges, they need to know that their digital competencies are an important condition for the effective integration of technologies into education (Cattaneo et.al., 2022)
In recent years, studies examining teachers' digital competencies in various contexts (Cataneo, et.al., 2022; Hinojo-Lucena et al., 2019; Lucas, et.al., 2021; Zhao, et.al., 2021) have begun to increase. These studies focused on the factors that teachers' digital competencies affect and are affected by at various educational levels. The absence of studies that systematically summarize why teachers' digital competencies are important and how they affect education processes and students is considered as an important gap.
In this chapter, it is aimed to discuss the digital competencies of teachers, which have come to the fore with the experience of digitalization in the field of education and especially with the developments in the COVID 19 pandemic, and to present a general theoretical structure on the subject of teacher competencies to the readers. For this purpose, by presenting an overview of the concept of digital competence, teachers' digital competences were examined and their importance was revealed, digital competence frameworks which are developed for teachers were presented and it has been explthe reasons why the teachers should be digitally competent Then, suggestions were presented regarding the efforts of teachers to improve their digital competencies.
In the present chapter, it is searched for the answers of the questions such as technological tools’changing the traditional classroom atmosphere, the education technology’addition to education,
In the present chapter, it has set out to answer the research questions of whether technological tools and instruments change the traditional class atmosphere, technology of education adds to the education, distance education becomes a part of education systems during sudden emergency events such as Covid 19 pandemic and which competence the teachers should have to meet the demands and requirements of the students who changes in technological developments and digitalization period.
With this aim, in the chapter, it has presented general outlook of theoretical structure of digital competence by utilizing digital competence frameworks. Following it, the suggestions on future researches are presented by discussing that teacher should have digital competence and in which areas these competence should be situated.
In this way, the present study attempts to answer the research questions as follows:
- 1.
What is the definition of the digital competence term and the reasons why the digital competence term emerged?
- 2.
What does digital competence of teacher refer in the skills of 21th century?
- 3.
Which are the digital competence frameworks prepared for the educator in the world?
- 4.
Why do the teachers have to be competent digitally?