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Teachers’ professional learning and competence in the digital era: the

DigCompEdu framework

Chapter · December 2018

DOI: 10.4399/97888255210234

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Stefania Bocconi Sabrina Panesi

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Questo articolo è pubblicato In Maria Ranieri, Laura Menichetti e
Martha Kaschny Borges (a cura di), Teacher Education & Training
on ICT between Europe and Latin America (Roma, Aracne, 2018)

Teachers’ professional learning and competence

in the digital era: the DigCompEdu framework

di STEFANIA BOCCONI AND SABRINA PANESI1

1. Teachers’ professional learning

With teaching professions facing rapidly changing de-

mands, today’s educators require an increasingly broad set
of competences. In particular, the ubiquity of digital com-
munication and the endeavour to help students become
digitally competent requires educators to develop their
own digital competence. Results from several international
studies (e.g. OECD PISA and TALIS) have also emphasised
that teachers’ digital competence is a key variable to integrate
digital resources into the teaching-learning process, hence pro-
moting innovative pedagogies and learning settings. Highly
qualified and competent teachers are essential to transform edu-
cational systems, by means of mastering the technological and
pedagogical knowledge and skills needed in order to effectively
integrate digital technologies into their day-to-day educational
practice (e.g. Schleicher, 2015). The goal for teachers is not to

1
Institute for Educational Technology, National Research Council of Italy (CNR-
ITD) (http://www.itd.cnr.it).

1
2 Stefania Bocconi and Sabrina Panesi

learn how to run technological devices in the classroom, but to

design and implement suitable pedagogies that use technology
to better meet student needs (e.g. Almerich et al, 2016; Guer-
riero, 2017).
Through the idea of teachers as designers of learning (i.e.
experts in the art and science of teaching effectively employing
and combining pedagogies to achieve the desired learning
goals) that innovation at the level of practice can be seen as a
normal side of the teaching profession to solve the daily chal-
lenges in a context which is in constant change (Paniagua and
Istance, 2018, p. 18).
Hence, fostering teachers’ (digital) competence is recognised
as a key element in improving the quality and efficiency of
schools and remains a high priority in Europe education agenda.
As pointed out in the Commission’s Communication from De-
cember 2016 “Digital skills and competences need to be includ-
ed in both pre- and in-service training of teachers and actively
supported by school leaders” (European Commission, 2016).
In Italy, the Government’s recent policy initiative on reform-
ing the education system (National Plan for Digital Education -
PNSD) shows awareness of teacher competence issues, aiming
to (i) develop teacher training actions, (ii) support educational
innovation, and (iii) promote digital culture for teaching (Law
107/2015, comma 58, letters “d” and “e”).
Concerning teacher training for digital competence, the
PNSD is linked to the national three-year training plan (IT: Pi-
ano Nazionale di Formazione Triennale). This plan centres on
key strategies for overcoming the weaknesses of the Italian
school system and aligning it with the best international stand-
ards. These strategies are: (i) harmonizing the training actions
that individual teachers carry out with the school community;
(ii) promoting and supporting collaboration at school level, lo-
cal level, national level, and international level; (iii) ensuring
the quality of training; (iv) defining teacher training as a priori-
ty. With this plan, teacher training becomes fundamental
throughout the professional life of educators in primary, sec-
 Stefania Bocconi and Sabrina Panesi 3

ondary and IVET levels, and this could be a crucial factor for
improvement and innovation in the Italian educational system.
In the field of the digital competence, teacher training aims
to ensure full and effective correlation between educational and
organizational innovation and digital technologies. Further-
more, this plan promotes the use of digital technologies for
teaching and learning, and furthers understanding of the rela-
tionships between digital technologies and (i) different learning
environments (e.g., physical or digital, at school or at home),
(ii) newly constructed school buildings, (iii) evolution in con-
tents, including online distribution and production, (iv) evolu-
tion in digital competence (related to three dimensions identi-
fied in the PNSD: transversal, computational and as an active
agent of social change).
The picture for educators in the higher education sector
across Europe is quite different.
Firstly, their professional development does not seem to be a
priority within the educational policies of European Member
States; training hardly ever occupies a systemic role in such pol-
icies. In the few instances where it has been institutionally for-
malized, it is not organically linked to European policies.
At international level, there is a stark difference between
countries like Norway, United Kingdom and Spain, where train-
ing provision is present and plays a highly-integrated role with-
in the university organization, and other countries, where train-
ing initiatives are only partially present or totally absent. Italy is
among the latter group, with no strategic plan for training edu-
cators in higher education; hence there is no guidance or sup-
port for technological innovation in teaching practice in univer-
sities.
Several authors highlighted the need to consider the compe-
tences of educators in higher education. Gonzáles & Wagenaar
(2003) in “The Tuning Educational Structures in Europe” clas-
sified the competence in general (instrumental, interpersonal,
systemic) and specific (know, know-how and know how to be,
now how to transcend). Referring to this work, Epasto (2015)
extends and adapts these competences to the Italian context re-
4 Stefania Bocconi and Sabrina Panesi

ferring to (i) Organizational and planning competence; (ii) dis-

ciplinary and teaching competence; (iii) communication, inter-
personal and psycho-pedagogical competence; and (iv) digital
competence. In particular, the digital competences of educators
in higher education include (i) how to manage ICT during edu-
cational activities; (ii) how to create, manage and use social
networks and tools in a learning context; (iii) how to create and
distribute asynchronous presentations and training sessions; (iv)
know how to provide useful information to students on tools for
managing their organizational activities and for their learning;
(v) how to manage online assessment tools; (vi) how to use dig-
ital technologies to cooperate and collaborate online, e.g. by
sharing files or documents; (vii) how to organize and manage
courses on LMS platforms. These competences can form the
basis for creating a multiform and flexible professional profile
via which educators develop the ability to change and innovate
in the different situations that the institutional university context
inevitably involves.
Although concepts of professionalism are often highly indi-
vidualistic and assumed to reside in the knowledge and capa-
bilities of individual teachers, Paniagua and Istance (2018)
bring the discussion forward and refer to teachers as ‘connected
professionals’, highlighting how teacher professional compe-
tence is not reducible to a set of individual traits but strongly
depends also on collaborative learning and design, and on active
networking. Teachers in school networks are continuously in
contact with a large community of practice and other resources
that are essential support for their professional development.

2. Defining teacher digital competence: examples from

around Europe

At international and national level a number of frameworks

and self-assessment tools have been developed over the last
years to describe the facets of digital competence for educators
and to help them assess their competence, identify their training
needs and offer targeted training opportunities. If planned and
 Stefania Bocconi and Sabrina Panesi 5

undertaken appropriately, the development of comprehensive

frameworks that define and describe the digital competences
that teachers are expected to deploy, can bring numerous bene-
fits to the education systems, highlighting the professionalism /
knowledge / skills that are unique to teachers; encouraging
teacher self-reflection; and providing a shared and sound basis
for the planning and provision of coherent, career-long provi-
sion of appropriate opportunities through which every teacher
can acquire and develop the competences s/he needs.
At national level, a ‘Common Digital Competence Frame-
work for Teachers’ (INTEF, 2017) has been developed and
supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and
Sport. Coordinated by the National Institute of Educational
Technologies and Teacher Training (INTEF). This Framework
for teachers is based on “The European Digital Competence
Framework for Citizens” (Vourikari et al. 2016) and includes
five areas and descriptors developed for the 21 competences.
The Framework for Teachers defines three overall competence
progression levels (A, B and C), each of which further articu-
lates in two sublevels (A1 and A2; B1 and B2; C1 and C2).
Bearing in mind the acknowledgement and certification of
the levels of digital competence of teachers, an online portfolio
of digital competence of teachers have also been implemented
associated to the framework. The portfolio (in Spanish) consists
of 3 main sections:
• Biography, including the self-assessment tool, which is the
essential part of the service. In addition, a timeline shows
the experience of teaching in the field of pedagogy and
digital learning.
• Dossier of teachers in digital competence, where teachers
collect real and verifiable evidences of the level reached in
the self-evaluation.
• Digital Competence Passport (as a result from the previous
two sections), that is printable, upgradeable and shareable
and that teachers could submit to any educational admin-
istration or entity for validation.
6 Stefania Bocconi and Sabrina Panesi

Similarly, ‘The Professional Digital Competence Framework

for Teacher’ defined by the Norwegian Centre for ICT in Edu-
cation (Kelentric et al., 2017), depicts the essential elements of
the professional digital competence of teachers. Although it is
based on national strategies and guidelines, this framework pro-
vides an overall approach, in which extensive and complex
teacher competence is viewed from a digital perspective.
The framework consists of seven competence areas:
• Subjects and basic skills, focusing on how digital devel-
opments are changing and expanding the content of sub-
jects;
• School in society, analysing different perspectives on digi-
tal developments and the importance and function of digi-
tal media in today's society;
• Ethics, understanding schools' core values in relation to
digitalisation in society.
• Pedagogy and subject didactics, acquiring pedagogical
knowledge, as well as knowledge of subject didactics rel-
evant to the practice of teaching profession in a digital en-
vironment.
• Leadership of learning process, being able to effectively
guide learning work in a digital environment.
• Interaction and communication, using digital technologies
for information, collaboration, and knowledge sharing
with various stakeholders in a way that builds trust, and
contributes to participation and interaction.
• Change and development, being aware that the develop-
ment of digital competence is a lifelong, dynamic, situa-
tional and flexible process.
Developed at international level in the context of a policy ex-
perimentation (Erasmus Plus initiative), the MENTEP frame-
work (and related self-assessment tool TET-SAT)2 depicts four
dimensions of digital pedagogical competence: digital peda-
gogy, digital content use and production, digital communication

2
http://mentep.eun.org/home
 Stefania Bocconi and Sabrina Panesi 7

and collaboration, digital citizenship, divided into 15 sub-areas

and 30 competencies.
Each competency is illustrated by five statements describing
relevant practical pedagogical situations at five competency
levels. Users read the five statements, reflect on their actual
teaching practice and select the one that most closely matches
their own pedagogical behaviour. In order to provide a compe-
tency score, each of the five statements represents one compe-
tency level (from starter to expert). After answering the self-
assessment questionnaire, teachers receive feedback on their
competency level and links to national and European online
ecosystems of training resources. Beyond triggering self-
reflection, the intention behind MENTEP is to increase teach-
ers’ awareness and foster a change in their attitudes towards
technology us to support learning and teaching.
Overall these models highlight pedagogy as the backbone of
teachers’ professional digital competence, entailing an under-
standing of the nature of students’ learning process and teaching
practices. Moreover, they are defined according to a general ba-
sis, which means that they can be applied to all teachers in the
education system, from Primary Education to Higher Education.

3. The European Digital Competence framework for Edu-

cators (DigCompEdu)

In order to reinforce national and/or regional initiatives and

to provide a common understanding of educators' digital com-
petence, a digital competence framework for educators defined
at European level was needed. To this end, the European Com-
mission’s Joint Research Centre has developed the Digital
Competence framework for Educator (DigCompEdu), a concep-
tual tool that systematically maps out educators’ digital compe-
tencies.
The framework embraces twenty-two different educator-
specific digital competences falling within six different spheres.
The emphasis is not on technical skills. Rather, the framework
focuses on the various ways educators leverage digital technol-
8 Stefania Bocconi and Sabrina Panesi

ogies to enhance and innovate teaching practices, learning pro-

cesses and educational outcomes. Hence, DigCompEdu do-
mains encompass a range of crucial aspects of teachers’ profes-
sional digital competence as discussed in the previous sections,
including:
• Teaching and learning: To plan for and implement digital
devices and resources into teaching; to enhance the effec-
tiveness and to appropriately manage and orchestrate digital
teaching interventions.
• Digital resources: Finding, creating and sharing resources
that are tailored to the learning context and individual
learners' needs.
• Empowering learners: To support classroom differentiation
and personalised education, boosting the active involvement
of learners.
• Assessment: Innovatively using the potential of digital tools
for enhancing assessment and feedback.
• Facilitating students’ digital competence: Making learners
fit for life in the digital age.
• Professional engagement: Enhancing and Opening up
communication and collaboration strategies, within and be-
yond the organisation.
The development of the DigCompEdu framework is based
on the analysis, mapping and clustering of the elements constit-
uent of educators' digital competence, as these are detailed in
existing national and international frameworks, self-assessment
tools and certification schemes. This reference model thus gen-
erated was then subjected to extensive stakeholder consultations
and complemented by (6) proficiency levels.
The DigCompEdu framework provides a common language
and approach that can help the dialogue and exchange of best
practices across Member States.

4. Developing self-reflection and self-assessment tools of

teachers’ digital competence
 Stefania Bocconi and Sabrina Panesi 9

In order to allow educators in primary, secondary, initial

VET and Higher Education to reflect on and assess their own
level of digital competence, a self-assessment tool (named
DigCompEduSAT) will be developed based on the conceptual
model. This is to be an online questionnaire which, when com-
pleted, generates an instant diagnostic report identifying the re-
spondent’s digital competence profile. As well as detailing the
educator’s current strengths, DigCompEduSAT highlights areas
in which personal progress can be made and outlines possible
steps forward in competence development. Beyond serving in-
dividual respondents, the tool is also intended to be of use to
other education stakeholders, including teacher educators and
trainers.
Localised versions of the DigCompEduSAT prototype tool
will be tested during Spring 2019 in five Member States, in-
cluding Italy, Spain, Portugal, Estonia and Finland, involving a
total of around 900 teachers at different levels in these five
countries alone. Further validation will emerge from case stud-
ies (interviews and focus groups), which will generate qualita-
tive data and recommendations for fine tuning the final release
version of the tool.
In Italy, the pilot initiative is organized and conducted by the
National Research Council, Institute for Educational Technolo-
gy (CNR-ITD). Building upon the successful experience of the
SELFIE pilot initiative regarding the digital capability of
schools3, the DigCompEduSAT piloting in Italy will involve
several actors and stakeholders. To ensure solid local support
for educators during the pilot implementation, a network of lo-
cal coordinators will be established, involving two regional-
level education authorities (USR Umbria and USR Calabria),
two Institutes of Educational Research (INDIRE and IPRASE),
two higher education institutions (SCIFOPSI at University of
Florence and DISFOR at the University of Genova) and an edu-
cational foundation run by the Intesa San Paolo bank (La

3
http://tiny.cc/digcomporg
10 Stefania Bocconi and Sabrina Panesi

Fondazione per la Scuola, Compagnia di San Paolo within the

context of Reconnections project). Jointly with CNR-ITD, the
local coordinators will (i) activate their local networks of
schools and departments, informing educators about the
DigCompEduSAT pilot in Italy, and (ii) supporting educators’
engagement in the self-assessment process during the imple-
mentation phase.
Finally, to introduce educators to the key concepts of the
DigCompEdu framework and helping them to (self)reflect on
their current practice, the European Commission’s Joint Re-
search centre also developed a complementary tool named
DigCompEdu Check-in. This online questionnaire for self-
reflection, based on DigCompEdu, mainly focuses on teachers’
self-perception of their competence and provides them with
suggestions and feedback on how to further enhance their digi-
tal competence.

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