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Part of
Language Teacher Development in Digital Contexts
Edited by Hayriye Kayi-Aydar and Jonathon Reinhardt
[Language Learning & Language Teaching 57] 2022
► pp. 135–156

Chapter 7
Fostering (Critical) digital teaching competence through virtual exchange

This chapter reports on findings in relation to one of the sub-questions that the Evaluating and Upscaling Telecollaborative Teacher Education (EVALUATE) project, an Erasmus+ funded European Policy Experimentation (EPE), set out to address. We explore how online (language) teacher trainees are best supported in developing critical digital literacy as framed by Darvin (2017) and Morris (2017) as well as critical digital teaching competence, which remains underexplored in Virtual Exchange (VE)-based teacher education. The insights gained from a close examination of one EVALUATE exchange highlight how crucial systematic reflective evaluation of the processes the trainees are involved in is for competence development in VE contexts.

Keywords: critical digital literacy, teaching competence, Virtual Exchange (telecollaboration), reflective evaluation, task design
Article outline
  • Critical digital literacy and its constituent elements
  • VE, teacher education and (critical) digital competence development
  • Methodological approach
    • The German-Polish exchange: Participants
    • Learning context and task sequence
    • Research methodology
  • Findings and discussion
    • Safe learning environment
    • Task design
    • Interactional support
  • Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 January 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.57.07mul
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