Building Competencies for Digital-Based Diagnosis and Support in Early Literacy Instruction

A seminar concept for pre-service and in-service elementary school teachers

Abstract

The education system has a responsibility to ensure a sustainable influence on the digital transformation and to secure that recent developments are taken into account for educational processes. To meet this challenge, teachers need digital competencies. For early literacy instruction, this primarily concerns the ability to handle data and digital tools competently for diagnostic and promotional scopes.

This paper presents an overall concept to address these competencies. It comprises 2 seminars. Seminar 1 is aimed at undergraduate students studying to be elementary school teachers. Seminar 2 additionally involves practicing elementary school teachers in terms of a Community of Practice. 

Both seminars are modularized and designed as flipped classrooms in a blended learning format, which enables participants to acquire declarative knowledge independently in an asynchronous setting. The application of this knowledge and exchange takes place synchronously. The participants are provided with a LMS, which can be accessed by both students and teachers.

Learning in both seminars takes place in a situated manner. In Seminar 1, this is achieved by discussing constructed, but concrete cases of application, which in seminar 2 are subsequently supplemented with real diagnostic/support cases from the classes of the participating teachers. Both seminars contain units that provide participants with the opportunity to use an artificially intelligent spelling app, developed by the authors. Thus, participants can train specific digital competencies, such as the beneficial, but also critical and ethical, handling of data, the pedagogical handling of digital tools and the implementation of said tools in the classroom.