*3.1.7 Impact of technologies and qualification*

Influence of technologies on students (*to whom*) prevails in all qualification grades (see **Table 10** - **Figure 5**). A slight increase compared to the methodologies (*how*) is found in the higher level of qualification.

#### *3.1.8 Impact of technologies and seniority*

Influence of technologies on students (*to whom*) prevails also within the seniority of service clusters (see **Table 11** – **Figure 6**). It peaks in the younger age group.

## *3.1.9 Impact of technologies and previous PD training*

Influence of technologies on students (*to whom*) prevails also within the previous PD training clusters (see **Table 12** – **Figure 6**). It peaks in the 'design of learning environment', while it stabilizes for 'technology' and 'digital-technology'.

#### *3.1.10 Impact of technologies and MM assignment*

Same result for what concerns the characteristic of middle-management assignment (see **Table 13** - **Figure 7**). Influence of technologies on students (*to whom*)


#### **Table 10.**

*Impact of technologies/qualification.*

**Figure 5.** *Impact of technologies/seniority.*

#### *Teacher Education in the 21st Century - Emerging Skills for a Changing World*


#### **Table 11.**

*Aspects of teaching/seniority.*

#### **Figure 6.**

*Impact of technologies/PD training.*


#### **Table 12.**

*Impact of technologies/previous PD training.*


#### **Table 13.**

*Impact of technologies/MM assignment.*

prevails in each of the three functions. It should be noted that for the Instrumental function the data of the participation of the tools (*to whom*) and the adaptation of strategies (*how*) are equivalent.

**33**

*Remote Support through Technologies: A Research-Training on Teachers' 'Sophisticated Knowledge'*

The survey highlighted that the relationship with students has been the teaching practice aspect most influenced by technologies/digital resources in the period of

The group of teachers involved in the survey has stable and prevalent characteristics: on average elderly, with many years of experience and sufficient professional

Although the perception of the importance of the relationship with students does not seem to be affected, in general, by the characteristics of group – age, qualification, seniority, training, assignment - it nevertheless describes a different trend in them: it gradually increases with age (**Table 9**), it is higher in high qualification (**Table 10**), peaks in novices and then stabilizes in veterans (**Table 11**), prevails in those who have received more complex technological training (the

The trend of perceptions regarding teaching strategies (*how*) should also be considered: although it has a weight equal to half the participation of students (**Table 7**), it grows considerably with age (**Table 9**), it is quite high among teachers with high qualifications (**Table 10**) and with assignment as instrumental function

Unlike the professional assignment - which does not seem to affect the perception of the importance of the impact of technologies on the relationship with the student - the data of complex technology training should be compared with further

Support for students' learning processes should by now be taken as the focal point of the ability to teach, not secondary to disciplinary knowledge [36]. If valid in general, this assumption is even more valid in emergency conditions, when concentrate efforts on reducing potential exclusions is so necessary, as stated by

design of learning environments - **Table 12**), is stable in every type of

**5. Conclusion. Rethinking the descriptive models of teaching**

supranational bodies [2, 5, 7] and confirmed by our survey.

The greatest urgency of the teachers was felt regarding the participation of single student and of class as well as regarding the communicative effectiveness - in terms of strategies - while teachers seem not to have bothered to facilitate the learn-

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95949*

the pandemic, according to the teachers involved.

ing contents – **Tables 7** and **8**.

*Impact of technologies/MM assignment.*

training on technologies.

function (**Table 13**).

(**Table 13**).

investigations.

**4. Results**

**Figure 7.**

*Remote Support through Technologies: A Research-Training on Teachers' 'Sophisticated Knowledge' DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95949*

**Figure 7.**

*Impact of technologies/MM assignment.*

#### **4. Results**

The survey highlighted that the relationship with students has been the teaching practice aspect most influenced by technologies/digital resources in the period of the pandemic, according to the teachers involved.

The greatest urgency of the teachers was felt regarding the participation of single student and of class as well as regarding the communicative effectiveness - in terms of strategies - while teachers seem not to have bothered to facilitate the learning contents – **Tables 7** and **8**.

The group of teachers involved in the survey has stable and prevalent characteristics: on average elderly, with many years of experience and sufficient professional training on technologies.

Although the perception of the importance of the relationship with students does not seem to be affected, in general, by the characteristics of group – age, qualification, seniority, training, assignment - it nevertheless describes a different trend in them: it gradually increases with age (**Table 9**), it is higher in high qualification (**Table 10**), peaks in novices and then stabilizes in veterans (**Table 11**), prevails in those who have received more complex technological training (the design of learning environments - **Table 12**), is stable in every type of function (**Table 13**).

The trend of perceptions regarding teaching strategies (*how*) should also be considered: although it has a weight equal to half the participation of students (**Table 7**), it grows considerably with age (**Table 9**), it is quite high among teachers with high qualifications (**Table 10**) and with assignment as instrumental function (**Table 13**).

Unlike the professional assignment - which does not seem to affect the perception of the importance of the impact of technologies on the relationship with the student - the data of complex technology training should be compared with further investigations.

#### **5. Conclusion. Rethinking the descriptive models of teaching**

Support for students' learning processes should by now be taken as the focal point of the ability to teach, not secondary to disciplinary knowledge [36]. If valid in general, this assumption is even more valid in emergency conditions, when concentrate efforts on reducing potential exclusions is so necessary, as stated by supranational bodies [2, 5, 7] and confirmed by our survey.

**Figure 8.** *The DigCompEdu areas and scope ([31], p. 15).*

Place the student at the center of the teaching intervention - even more student with special needs - is the recommendation of Europe which, not by chance, adopted an articulated model of educators' technological [31] - **Figure 8**: to the 'characteristic phases of any teaching process, supported or not by technologies' (see area 1, 2, 3, 4) it adds the transversal area 5 of 'Empowering learners', which 'recognizes the potential of digital technologies for teaching strategies and learner-centered learning' ([31], p. 16).

In the traditional explanatory models of 'teacher's thinking' by Shulman and Koehler and Mishra [24, 25] the main components of the teacher's practical knowledge - 'learning contents' and 'intervention strategies' - are theoretically placed at the center, though they are not so relevant in the representations of the teachers involved in the survey and who are committed to addressing the problems related to 'emergency' distance learning during the COVID19 pandemic.

Traditional models of "teacher's thinking" [37, 38], mainly focused on disciplinary-knowledge, recognize other component of teaching didactic practice – elsewhere defined 'holistic', 'contextual' or 'relational' [39–41] - as "student participation" and "support to learning processes", as highlighted in the survey – but not specific weight.

The weakness of the TPCK construct would be the underlying logic of the 'overlap-separation' between the technological, pedagogical and disciplinary area. Although the authors state that 'the effective use of technologies in teaching is possible only when the teacher is able to integrate these three different cognitive components' ([25], p. 78), they should better clarify whether such integration takes place in actual practice, in the different procedures of teaching, or 'in the teacher's mind' as actual knowledge, then made into practice - as Shulman's thinking model seems to suggests [38]. Although, as stated by Koehler and Mishra ([25], p. 65), 'the TPCK framework for teacher knowledge is described in detail, as a complex interaction between three bodies of knowledge: content, pedagogy and technology'; albeit this framework seems to be useful to describe the dynamic/transactional relationship [27] between content, pedagogy and technology, it seems to be not sufficient to describe the actual complexity of the teacher's skills, given it underestimates the component of the 'student's point of view' [27]. Also for this, PCK and TPCK models are useful to describe the teacher's knowledge, as reasoning and procedures followed, but not sufficient to explain the stakes of the teaching practice [42–44], mainly in the *corona teaching* phase.

As noted elsewhere [17, 45], 'in other words, teacher should develop' the ability to teach content from the students 'point of view' (Ben-Peretz 2011, p. 4), making

**35**

**Author details**

**Acknowledgements**

**Conflict of interest**

Laura Sara Agrati

University of Bergamo, Benevento, Italy

provided the original work is properly cited.

for the questionnaire administration, course A.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

\*Address all correspondence to: laurasara.agrati@gmail.com

*Remote Support through Technologies: A Research-Training on Teachers' 'Sophisticated Knowledge'*

the most of the possibilities offered by the e-learning environment. An extension of the TPACK, more "sophisticated" [17, 45] would be necessary to describe the knowledge of the teacher, which would concern not only the choice and delivery of effective digital content, from an organizational point of view, but also adaptation and *re-shaping* of knowledge to be taught on the basis of the characteristics of the students - as American experiences suggest (see *ICritical Thinking* of Educational Testing Service at the University of Princeton) and the DigCompEdu model - given

that they take the perspective from the point of view of learning outcomes.

The current emergency scenario clarified the need to 'integrate' each components of teaching - planning, intervention, reporting, monitoring, etc. – in order to support student participation and learning: 'downstream', at the instructional level, and 'upstream', at the design level. On both levels, e-learning technologies can offer concrete support as long as teachers are adequately trained. The teachers involved perceive the learning needs of students as urgent, those who have received more complex training in technologies - not only at the instrumental level but also in learning environments - have felt this urgency even more. As noted by the OECD study ([22] – **Table 2**), among the skills underlying the professional development support of teachers there are disciplinary knowledge, support for 'processing and

The data should be compared with other similar studies (in terms of technological training of teachers) or different (with a larger population), to be taken as evidence and to allow a possible generalization of the results. The study presented was carried out in a population with stable and geographically similar socio-professional characteristics and highlighted that as age, length of service and level of training increase the importance given to the 'students' factor increases. 'in the relationship with technologies. Although it is extremely interesting to verify whether this trend

Acknowledgment to Gianfranco Specchia for the analysis of data, to Rocco Vivoli

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95949*

cognitive strategies' and 'collaborative group skills'.

would reappear in a population with diversified characteristics.

#### *Remote Support through Technologies: A Research-Training on Teachers' 'Sophisticated Knowledge' DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95949*

the most of the possibilities offered by the e-learning environment. An extension of the TPACK, more "sophisticated" [17, 45] would be necessary to describe the knowledge of the teacher, which would concern not only the choice and delivery of effective digital content, from an organizational point of view, but also adaptation and *re-shaping* of knowledge to be taught on the basis of the characteristics of the students - as American experiences suggest (see *ICritical Thinking* of Educational Testing Service at the University of Princeton) and the DigCompEdu model - given that they take the perspective from the point of view of learning outcomes.

The current emergency scenario clarified the need to 'integrate' each components of teaching - planning, intervention, reporting, monitoring, etc. – in order to support student participation and learning: 'downstream', at the instructional level, and 'upstream', at the design level. On both levels, e-learning technologies can offer concrete support as long as teachers are adequately trained. The teachers involved perceive the learning needs of students as urgent, those who have received more complex training in technologies - not only at the instrumental level but also in learning environments - have felt this urgency even more. As noted by the OECD study ([22] – **Table 2**), among the skills underlying the professional development support of teachers there are disciplinary knowledge, support for 'processing and cognitive strategies' and 'collaborative group skills'.

The data should be compared with other similar studies (in terms of technological training of teachers) or different (with a larger population), to be taken as evidence and to allow a possible generalization of the results. The study presented was carried out in a population with stable and geographically similar socio-professional characteristics and highlighted that as age, length of service and level of training increase the importance given to the 'students' factor increases. 'in the relationship with technologies. Although it is extremely interesting to verify whether this trend would reappear in a population with diversified characteristics.
