Image Of A Teacher In The Context Of Digital Pedagogy

Abstract

Nowadays in the digital transformations of educational system there is a necessity to take a new look at the image of a teacher, who still remains the key factor in educational environment. Teacher’s personality effects the outcomes and effectiveness of the educational process. In this regard, we should reconsider the obligatory pre-service teacher’s personal qualities, which will enable the novice teacher to work at “digital” schools. Although several models of teacher professional qualities exist, they require further analysis under conditions of significant digital shift in educational restructuring. Therefore, the aim of the present research is to define the content and structure of image-forming characteristics of pre-service teachers on the new development stage of digital education. To fulfill the challenging endeavor, we analyzed the scientific literature and conceptualized the “image of a teacher”; by means of content analysis we investigated the structure and functions of an image of a teacher; with comparative and intent analysis we surveyed the bachelor students of the “Pedagogical Education” department (Pskov State University, Russia) specializing in the Russian and English languages, in order to determine the professional characteristics they have acquired, with a special attention to their digital literacy as an essential part of their professional competence. As a result, following the theoretical ideas, we have worked out some guidelines for the development of the image of pre-service teachers, which will enable them to succeed in their future pedagogical career.

Keywords: Digital literacy, functions of an image, image of a teacher, structure of an image

Introduction

The issues of the components of a teacher’s image in the era of digitalization are particularly topical. On the one hand, various educational Internet platforms, mobile applications for learning, special channels on YouTube, TikTok videos, academic mobility programs deprive the teachers of their unique status as the unique transmitters of information, since they cease to be the only source of information. A completely new view at the field of education is presented by the Moscow School of Management “Skolkovo”, which identifies new areas of a specialist training in the educational field: the teacher turns out to be a moderator, a designer of educational trajectories, a tutor, an organizer of project training, a mentor of startups, “a game teacher”, mind fitness coach, etc.

According to UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers (version 3) a teacher should not only transmit a deep knowledge but also show how by means of ICT as a tool to produce new knowledge. Therefore, the role of teachers and their professional development needs reshaping.

The situation of forced transition to distance learning due to the coronavirus pandemic makes the research topic particularly relevant. Teachers actively master the educational Internet platforms, namely Coursera, Skyeng, Open Education, Internet resources such as MIRO, Zoom conference, etc. Several leading universities of Russia took part in the development of academic educational projects, national open education platforms relying on mass open online courses (MOOCs), learning management systems (LMS), etc. (Almazova, Krylova et al., 2020; Rubtsova et al., 2020). Education of the future with the latest interactive digital technologies is becoming a reality.

Problem Statement

In the context of digital transformation are novice teachers ready to the challenges of the digital pedagogy? What do they need to know? How should they learn to teach?

The relevance of the topic has been proved by many scholars (Almazova et al., 2019; Almazova, Eremin et al.; Almazova, Krylova et al., 2020; Ipatov et al., 2020; Ivanova et al., 2020) who state the failure of the academic pre-service courses of teacher preparation in the way they address the challenges the students have to deal with in the real classroom situation and, consequently, seem to set a gap impossible to be “bridged” by student-teachers.

Kasprzhak (2013) calls for competent people to come to school, who know how to make the process of learning interesting, and in order to achieve this the school needs to be “unpacked” and “open”. It is tempting to imagine future teachers in the school of the future as “teachers 2.0”, who know perfectly what Big Data is, easily manage the “smart” environment, or even appear in the form of a hologram.

In the scientific literature, there is a fairly wide range of studies devoted to the problem of image: style of a teacher, influence of the teacher's image on the educational process was considered by Donskaya (2004), Cherepanova (2007), Kalyuzhnyj (2004), Pochepcov (2001); procedural component of the image structure and teaching styles were explored by Evans et al. (2008).

The image of a teacher is a significant factor in determining learning outcomes. The reflection on personal image will allow the teachers to correct those of their characteristics that make it difficult to interact with students under the digital educational conditions.

In various scientific researches, the subject of scientific interest is either the phenomenon of image in the broad sense or the manifestation of image on the example of famous political figures or other public figures, or psychology of personality and image.

“Pedagogical education” departments are oriented to innovative programs development , they create really advanced programs in various fields of study. But does “advanced” really mean “ahead of time”?

Research Questions

• How should the image of a teacher change with the transformations of education?
• What is the image of a new teacher, a teacher of the digital future?

Purpose of the Study

In the present research, we will determine the concept and the content components of the “image of a teacher”, which would contribute to the learning process being motivating and effective, define the structure and functions of the image of a foreign language teacher; develop methodological principles for the development of the positive image of a teacher.

Research Methods

Various manifestations of the image characteristics of the teacher’s personality, which are the object of this study, suggest the use of a number of research methods: theoretical analysis of literature sources, content analysis of lessons; as well as the diagnostic (interviewing the students, schoolchildren), the method of mathematical processing of the results. The specifics of the object of the research led to the use of intent analysis, which allows to identify the intentions of the subjects based on the analysis of their communication style and behavior. Teacher's behavior is a complex mix of cognitive, affective and motivational individual sources. The depth of any kind of knowledge is personalized and consequently affects teacher’s behavior in the classroom. The study of the characteristics that define the image as positive, negative or acceptable involves the use of a comparative analysis method.

Findings

The analysis of scientific literature shows that in various historical periods, the teacher had to meet a certain set of requirements, for this purpose, professional charts were compiled, which reflected the key competencies of the teacher. Society creates stereotypes of the image of the teacher, which effects the perception of the representative of this profession.

The analysis of the theoretical material that identifies the essential content of the concept of “image” of a teacher in educational environment in general and in digital pedagogy in particular (Disch, 2020; Donskaya, 2004; Kalyuzhnyj, 2004), the definition of criteria for compliance with a particular level of formation of image characteristics (Bezukladnikov et al., 2019; Petrova et al., 2020), the analysis of image functions in the educational process (Pochepcov, 2001), exploring the styles of teaching (Evans et al., 2008) allows us to design a model of the image-forming content of the personality of a teacher in the digital educational environment. The model comprises the internal component, and external component, the component of digital literacy should be singled out; certain criteria to measure the level of development of skills, and functions.

Kalyuzhnyj (2004) considers the inside correspondence of the image of the profession or the inner “I” to be the leading component of the image, since it is responsible for the development of a teacher, for self-education. It is equally important that the pedagogical image corresponds to the inside characteristics of a person. The inside or professional component, according to Donskaya (2004), is represented in the teacher's personality in the form of qualities obtained as a result of professional growth: competence, knowledge, skills, abilities, individual style of professional activity and other qualities important for the teacher's profession. Cherepanova (2007) determines an individual image as a purposefully developed, integral, dynamic phenomenon caused by the correspondence and interpenetration of inside and outside individual qualities of a teacher, designed to ensure the harmonious interaction of a person with nature, society and him- or herself.

By, we mean a set of psychological and professional qualities of the individual, values, worldview, interpersonal and intercultural sensitivity and empathy, attitudes to understanding and dialogue, multilingualism, multiculturalism, SOFT and HARD skills. of a teacher, basing on UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers (version 3), includes application of ICT in education correctly to meet educational standards, development and integration of certain rubrics to assess pupil’s skills, creating digital learning environment, application of digital tools to provide online collaboration among students and evaluating their contribution. The is outer manifestations, such as business style in clothing, verbal and non-verbal (proxemics, oculistics, kinesics, sensorics, chromatics, etc.), paraverbal characteristics of interaction, design of the environment around.

We defined three for the development of a teacher’s image: (the degree of readiness for self-reflection and changes in their own image),(the degree of possession of the conceptual apparatus for the key components of the image), (the degree of implementation of the best manifestations of their own image in the educational space).

Depending on the degree of manifestation of these characteristics, the teacher’s image can be evaluated as positive (high degree of the development of the characteristics), acceptable (average level of the development of the characteristics mentioned before), negative (low degree of the development of the characteristics).

We conducted the diagnostics among 5-th year bachelor-students of the “Pedagogical education” program, profile “Russian and English language” (Pskov State University, Russia) during their school teaching practice in September of 2020. We based our analysis on the lesson plans the students developed and on the observation of the lessons that students conducted. The results of the diagnostics indicate that about 83% of students have an average level of formation of image components, about 4% have a negative image, 13% have a positive image.

As for the characteristics of the negative image of novice teachers, we noticed that it is manifested in the style of communication (two extremes: arrogant or very timid, a quiet voice, without emotions, monotonous speech). As well as in the cognitive component we can face two sides: the novice teachers do not produce the impression of a knowing person that is why they cannot become an authority for children, hence the problems with discipline in the classroom appear. Or, the other way round, the novice teacher conducts the lesson completely in English, without facilitating language difficulties for pupils, in this regard, the lesson material is not understood by the pupils, they are afraid to express their own opinion, as it may be incorrect from the point of view of the teacher.

Digital literacy, being an integral component of an image of a teacher, should be presented in more details. The analysis of our research reveals that only 13% of students during their school practice designed their lesson plans with ICT. They integrated digital technologies, tools to support teaching. They succeeded in using computers, mobile devices, software and networks in class. These students created presentations for their lessons with graphics, used additional material from Internet, applied drill-and-practice software (in the form of mobile learning applications such as Quizzlet, Kahoot, Simpler) to support teaching. These lessons were productive and interesting for pupils: thanks to the digitalization tools all pupils were involved in learning activities. In a questionnaire these pupils say they appreciate the lessons conducted in this way because they are interesting and they aren’t afraid to express their opinion in English. As for the rest of the students, they referred to the lack of time to design digital content of a lesson and poor digital facilities at school. Therefore, their lessons were more of reproductive character and it was obvious that some of the students got bored and were not involved in the learning activities.

We conducted the survey to find out about the practice of using digital technologies among novice teachers and found out that 96% of students say it’s easy for them to work on PC and other digital devices; 98% actively use the Internet; 85% show interest in new applications, programs and resources; 80% actively use social nets.

As for the index of digital literacy which traditionally consists of information, computer, communicative, media literacy and the attitude to technological innovations we found out that 83% of students can easily find any necessary information in the Internet referring to a number of sources. 87% of students can evaluate how up-to-date their software and hardware is; the work on computer isn’t challenging for them; 90% of students can easily name the most popular messengers and use them as means of communication; 94% of students know about the need of appropriate and respectful communication in Internet. 93% of students can post the news which thousands of people can see; 95% of students know where to read or watch the latest news. 78% of students follow the technological innovations. 84% of students say that digital devices facilitate their everyday life. So, it’s obvious that digital literacy of modern students is at high level.

Then we analyzed the digital literacy of students from the point of readiness to use digital technologies in education. Only 11% of students mention that they want to choose and develop own means of professional communication (teaching blog, forum, chat). 26% of students tried some educational online platforms (Skyeng, Coursera). But thanks to the educational policy of Pskov State University 96% of students of our experimental group participated in various online learning courses offered by leading Universities. Only 6% of students try to design their own complex interactive learning courses. 23% of students protect their data in Internet with complicated passwords and update their software. 37% of students want to switch to online education (as support to traditional education), give tasks for work in Internet, monitor the work of pupils via Internet, give individual feedback viaa Internet.

The diagnostic results, which showed that 83% of novice teachers have an average level of formation of image components, indicate the need to develop a number of principles that can be used to outline the professional guidelines for the formation of a positive image of a teacher:

1) It is recommended to start the image transformation from the external component. Internal changes will follow the external ones. The novice teachers should be careful about mimics gestures, clothes, voice, speech characteristics (external components of image); students should have skills of EFLT (procedural image content: know the methods of teaching, ethics of communication, apply creative approach); students should develop personal qualities (internal component of an image: values, motives of self-realization, personal qualities like being sociable, show empathy, kindness to children).

2) Making a list of external and internal qualities that need to be developed in the image of a foreign language teacher.

3) Choosing a dialogue as the only form of communication with pupils.

4) Be knowledgeable about the topics of interest to pupils.

6) Development of acting skills, artistry, excellence, performanceе style.

7) Developing digital literacy, including information, computer, communicative, media literacy; be ready to apply digital literacy in teaching.

Conclusion

Thus, digital transformations in education result in the changes of the traditional image of a teacher, i.e its concept, functions and structure.

The research shows as well that digital literacy has become an integral part of education and should be considered as one of the components of an image of a modern teacher.

The study of the issues related to the formation of a positive image of a teacher in a digital era is promising due to the fact that the following issues need further consideration and improvement: overcoming teachers’ dissatisfaction with themselves, their image, the discrepancy between the “image of the self” and the “image of the profession”; the relationship between the mechanisms of intergroup and interpersonal perception in the process of communication; the lack or insignificant set of knowledge about the formation and correction of an individual image; lack of effective feedback “teacher through the eyes of students” or teacher rating, which is formed by students; disclosure of the mechanisms of positive image formation and development.

In addition, it is interesting to further consider the problem of image from the standpoint of the axiological approach. With the digital shift there is a change in the values of society in the direction of the material aspect. Successful and prestigious professions are those that allow a person to be at the top of the social ladder. It is important to create conditions for the formation of not only a successful, but also a happy professional image of the teacher, so that it is attractive to students, and thus contributes to the effective achievement of learning goals.

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