Empowering Educators to Teach Online Reading, Learning, and Comprehension Skills on the Example of Ecological Problems

Abstract

Reading and learning are changing rapidly in today's world, and educational systems sometimes fail to keep pace. To define the needs related to reading in the modern world, the Stavanger Declaration was written, stating that students should be taught online reading and learning strategies. Educators must also adapt to this. As part of the Learning, Teaching, and Training (LTT) activities, participants (21 individuals from different levels of education) were introduced to the Internet reciprocal teaching (IRT) method. The basis of this research was to find out whether we can empower educators to teach online reading, learning, and comprehension skills in a short training session using the ubiquitous topic of ecological problems as an example. We were also interested in whether a short program that empowers educators to use IRT in their classroom can influence teachers to develop students' digital literacy in their pedagogical work. The results show that the ecological issue, with its timeliness and universal presence in our lives, is an appropriate topic for educators to teach digital literacy. The participants were successful in solving the set tasks, and all of them answered that they would use the IRT method in their future pedagogical work. Keywords: digital literacy, ecological problems, internet reciprocal teaching method, problem-solving, teacher training