Record Detail

The increasing availability of new technologies in an ever more digitalized world has
gained momentum in practically all spheres of life, making technology-related skills a
key competence not only in professional settings. Thus, schools assume responsibility
for imparting these skills to their students, and hence to future generations of professionals.
In so doing, teachers play a key role with their competences in using new
technologies constituting an essential prerequisite for the effective implementation of
such skills. As models of school development and school effectiveness found teacher
professionalization to be a key element with regards to student achievement as well
as teachers’ in-class use of new technology, the present research project conducts
secondary analyses using data from the IEA International Computer and Information
Literacy Study 2013 (ICILS 2013) regarding internal and external teacher professionalization.
Particular emphasis is placed on the implementation of new technologies
in class in a comparison between the education systems of Germany and the Czech
Republic. A Latent Class Analysis serves the purpose of establishing a teacher typology
with regards to technology-related professional development. This typology is subsequently
used for further analyses of additional factors that show a correlation with the
teachers’ use of computers in class. These include the teachers’ ICT self-efficacy and
their emphasis on teaching ICT skills. The results show two different types of teachers
across both countries. Teachers who participate in professional development use
computers more frequently in class, put more emphasis on teaching ICT skills and have
a stronger sense of ICT self-efficacy. When comparing teachers in Germany and the
Czech Republic, teachers in Germany who participate in professional development
consider themselves more ICT self-efficient, while teachers in the Czech Republic use
computers more often and put more emphasis on teaching ICT skills compared with
their colleagues in Germany