Digitizing disciplinary contents

Frameworking vocational teachers’ digital competences

“…Regarding the teacher profiles that were focused on (see Table 1), a clear majority of the publications dated 2021 and 2022 underlined technological proficiency. Such competencies were self-assessed as low or average, but only in three records (Agrati, 2019;Alhonkoski et al, 2022;Gustavsson et al, 2020) do the authors provide a differentiation of specific digital resources and refer to contexts. Although the TPACK model advocates the integration of professional pedagogical competence and technological skills, some of the papers departing from this model did not address the pedagogical aspects.…”

“…They lacked a transformative capacity to use digital resources for quality improvement of their teaching and learning. Innovative pedagogy is illustrated by Agrati (2019) who describes how four vocational teachers in Mechanical Technology adapt subject-specific content, millimeter measurement, into digital subject-specific content with the use of interactive power-points for students with dyslexia. In the concluding discussion, the author identifies a "sub-track" competence that goes beyond the TPACK model in adapting the pedagogical content knowledge to the students' specific needs.…”

“…Although this distinction is more blurred for VET teachers (Alhonkoski et al, 2022;Roll & Ifenthaler, 2021), we will differentiate between "broad" professional digital competencies (PDC) and "deep" vocational digital competencies for VET teachers (VDC). The former is comparatively more generic and linked to professional roles and engagement as VET teachers, whereas the latter refers to technology-enhanced subject-specific didactics that often need to be personalized to the learners' proficiency levels and innovated on the spot, which we above have referred to as adaptive pedagogy (Agrati, 2019). In Figure 1 we indicate that these two categories also relate somewhat differently to connectivity between school and work: PDC to the curricular level and the sustainability /development of a boundary environment (Tynjälä et al, 2022;Bouw et al, 2019) and VDC to the interactive level where learning enhancement may be supported by effective boundary objects (Akkerman & Bakker, 2012).…”