Diverse Approaches to Developing and Implementing Competency-based ICT Training for Teachers: A Case Study

Abstract

In this highly connected and rapidly changing world, there is no doubt that teachers play a key role in successfully integrating ICT into education. Realizing the importance of teachers’ capacity to do this, governments, teacher education institutions, the private sector, and NGOs alike provide training opportunities – ranging from the skills needed to use a particular software, to integrating educational technologies, to innovating teaching to promote 21st century skills. However, more often than not, teachers’ actual use of ICT in the classroom is reported as incremental, merely reinforcing traditional teacher-centred approaches by using slides and drill-and-practice exercises. Teachers’ use of ICT to actually innovate teaching is an exception rather than the norm. From the policy perspective, facilitating ICT-pedagogy integration in school education takes more than sporadic professional development, requiring more systematic policy-level changes to create an enabling environment. Research also shows that an essential condition to foster innovative teaching and learning is a close alignment between what the policy envisions and what actually happens in the classrooms. Inadequate monitoring of teachers’ development and their integration practices of ICT have also been raised as reoccurring concerns. With the formal adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, Member States are asked to abide by the Education 2030 Framework for Action that underscores the central role of teachers in achieving the new set of education goals. In line with this Framework, all governments are enjoined to ensure that by 2030, all learners are taught by qualified, professionally trained, motivated, committed, and wellsupported teachers who use relevant pedagogical approaches. Accordingly, one of the major focus areas for the governments is equipping teachers with the competencies through quality teacher training and continuous professional development, alongside favourable working conditions and appropriate support. In response to this, UNESCO Bangkok has implemented the ‘Supporting Competency-Based Teacher Training Reforms to Facilitate ICT-Pedagogy Integration’ project. Supported by Korean Funds-inTrust, this project encourages governments to enact systematic policy-level changes. They include reforming teacher training and professional development programmes into competency-based ones, whereby teacher development is systematically guided, assessed, monitored and tracked at policy and institutional levels. As part of the project, UNESCO Bangkok gathered four exemplary cases which took diverse approaches to developing and implementing competency-based ICT training and development for teachers. This publication is to take stock of different frameworks, models, processes, and reference materials that are used in developing and implementing national ICT competency standards for teachers and to provide step-by-step references for countries or organisations that wish to develop and implement competency-based teacher training and development. We hope that this collection of case studies, with varying approaches, will provide policy-makers with sufficient background and models to develop and implement ICT competency standards for teachers within their respective contexts