English Teachers’ Digital Competences in a Post-COVID Classroom: A Case Study
English Teachers’ Digital Competences in a Post-COVID Classroom: A Case Study

Summary/Abstract: The article addresses the issue of digital competences observed amongEnglish teachers in the context of the post-COVID classroom covered by the timeframefrom September 2022 to 2023. In order to check the level of professionaldigital competences (TPDC) of teachers, who, according to the current state ofresearch showed a complete lack of such skills in the first period of the pandemic,a retrospective interview was conducted. Next, in September 2022, when the firstschool year without any COVID-19 restrictions began, the teachers underwenta detailed analysis of their competences via a questionnaire based on the EuropeanFramework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu), allowingthem to self-mark (un)used digital skills during language lessons. Additionally,the teachers’ state of knowledge and skills from this period were compared withtheir competences at a later stage, in September 2023, to check the impact of suchfactors as time, previous experience in using the skills and trainings completedon the teachers’ functioning in the classroom. The study includes four teachersrepresenting two primary schools in Poland. It demonstrates that the respondents’knowledge and use of modern technologies was negligible in the first period ofthe pandemic, as assumed, while their digital competences acquired later werea matter of time and the result of the courses they had attended. As the studyparticipants exhibit different levels of proficiency, distributed unevenly over time,three distinct patterns in teachers’ (non)development of the above-mentionedcompetences have been outlined. In addition, the profiles of teachers participatingin the study have been constructed in line with the lists of determinants of teachers’digital proficiency proposed by the European Framework for the DigCompEdu.Following the research findings, it is not the teachers’ age, seniority or degree ofprofessional promotion at school that influences their digital skills, but rather theirbasic knowledge, education and additional functions performed in an institutionthat immediately impact the level of modern technology competences. It isrecommended to expand the research to measure the competences in question ona larger research sample, as well as to look at the very classroom situation fromthe point of view of actual skills (un)used by teachers during language instruction.

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