Teachers’ digital competences in the first educational policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis in four countries
Teachers’ digital competences in the first educational policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis in four countries

Summary/Abstract: With the sudden widespread closure of schools since February-March 2020 due to the physical distancing measures associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the digital competences became afocus of attention, being of central importance to the swift and equitable transition to the variousforms of emergency remote teaching implemented throughout the world as a strategy to insurecontinuity in education. This almost instantaneous mass shift to teaching online has madetransparent great disparities in how digital competences – particularly those of teachers - wereconceptualized, taught and assessed within various educational programs. We present acomparative analysis of the approaches to teachers’ learning and professional development thatstate and non-state actors in four Central and East European countries have articulated in the firstmonths of COVID-19 related lockdown. We take a Critical Frame Analysis approach to exploring theroles played by state and non-state actors in the four countries in conceptually framing therelationship between the digital competences required in emergency remote teaching and teachers’learning and professional development at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. It is suggested thatthe educational policy debate at the beginning of the crisis rendered visible: a) that this massivesudden shift required understanding digitalization as a complex multifaceted process requiringlevels of digital and pedagogical competence teachers were unlikely to have previously developed;b) that addressing these issues through short-term interventions would only exacerbate the risk ofignoring arising equity issues; c) that situating emergency measures in the context of potentialmedium and long-term developments could open opportunities to explore mainstreaming thedigitalization of education and promoting blended learning, as well as offer a better perspective onissues of digital poverty and the inequitable impact of not addressing it adequately will have in thefuture.

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