Initial training of teachers in basic education for the generation of knowledge with Information and Communication Technologies

Abstract

The essential role of basic education is to foster the development of the qualities of the students as unique individuals from their genetic potential, which must be provided for the creation of their own knowledge. Learning in school should be addressed to understand the benefit that involves comprehension of the facts, circumstances and events that take place in life, and organizing this information from the use of what they know and are learning (Macías, 2001). Teaching Digital competence requires a progressive and recurrent development of the student to generate ever more complete knowledge.

This paper presents part of an investigation conducted in 2012-2014 at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) with a sample of 137 teachers from 6th Primary Education (EP) in 50 Schools and Primary Education (CEIP) in the Madrid community, in order to ascertain whether the application of digital competence in the educational process facilitates the generation of knowledge in EP 6 pupils.

This study emphasises the fact that teachers are not fully developed in terms of digital competence, and make insufficient use of Information Technology and Communication (ICT) in the classroom to support the development and generation of knowledge in students. Further, initial training in the educational use of ICT is often conducted informally, and is primarily based on web 1.0, and only rarely is this training is successfully completed in college. Therefore, it is proposed that in the process of teacher training, more consideration should be given to the impact of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. We understand that integration of these technologies across the board in the digital literacy curriculum requires teacher training to educate students with a considered and responsable approach to the handling of ICT.