Yesterday, the British Journal of Educational Technology published our journal article “Emergency education effects on teacher abilities and motivation to use digital technologies”. This work includes a study to examine how teacher motivation and abilities related to the use of digital technologies for teaching have changed since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The methodology was originally based on two surveys and multiple interviews with teachers from primary and secondary school teachers in Catalonia. However, I was contacted by Laia Albó, Marc Beardsley and Davinia Hernández-Leo — colleagues from the Interactive & Distributed Technologies for Education research group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (TIDE-UPF) — to expand the study with messages from teachers on Twitter. This became an inspiring challenge to build a curated dataset of tweets that helped assess that teacher advice seeking on Twitter shifted from serving immediate instructional needs to focusing on professional development and the creation of their own digital content.
Abstract:
To identify factors that can contribute toward supporting educator adoption of digital technologies beyond the emergency remote teaching response to COVID‐19, we investigated how teachers’ motivation and abilities related to the use of digital technologies for teaching changed since the onset of the pandemic. Two surveys and interviews were conducted with school teachers in Spain. The first survey was completed at the onset of the COVID‐19 lockdown, the second survey and interviews in the weeks leading up to the school year that followed. Survey questions were from SELFIE and the Work Tasks Motivation Scale for Teachers. Moreover we analysed the type of advice teachers sought on Twitter during the lockdown and post‐lockdown periods. Results indicate that teachers believe their proficiency in using digital technologies for teaching has improved. Teacher confidence in using technology for preparing lessons, class teaching, assessing and providing feedback, and for communicating with students and families has increased along with teacher motivation to improve their digital skills and use digital technologies for teaching. Teacher advice seeking on Twitter seemed to shift from serving immediate instructional needs to focusing on professional development and the creation of their own digital content.
Pablo Aragón 