Digital Skills in Latin American Teachers

The introduction of information and communication technologies (ICTs) into educational practice has made teachers’ digital skills ever more relevant to education policies. With the closure of schools and the prominence of remote education, COVID-19 made these skills a top priority.

Because of its educational potential, most governments in the region included online education as part of their remote education strategy—or have at least assessed to do so. However, effective online education depends on key factors such as the resources students have at home, the quality of online educational platforms and materials, and the digital resources and skills of teachers. We know very little of the latter due to lack of data.

Following the lead of a recent study, we present below a profile of the digital skills of teachers in four Latin American countries. This profile is the result of an analysis of PIAAC databases, an OECD international survey that measures the digital (and math and reading comprehension) skills of adult population in 39 participating countries. Specifically, PIAAC evaluates the ability to solve problems in a digital environment, i.e. " is not a “computer literacy” measure, but one of cognitive skills required in the information age.”

In the region, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru took part in PIAAC; thus, the exercise focuses on teachers in these countries. For reference, we include the results of 12 OECD countries with above-average performance in the PISA Test—an OECD survey focused on measuring the skills of 15-year-olds.

Figure 1 shows distribution of teachers based on their level of competency scale performance in PIAAC digital environments. Some 7% of the teachers in the region did not have the skills to complete the evaluation on a computer (for example, because they do not know how use a mouse), 39% were at the level below 1, 40% at level 1, and 13% at levels 2 and 3.

In context, people at level below 1 can only perform a task that does not require any reasoning or transformation of information, while people at level 1 can only use familiar applications, such as email or a web browser, to perform actions that require few steps and simple reasoning. People at these levels would not be able to fill out a form in a web browser that they have not seen before. By contrast, nearly half of teachers in the OECD group of countries analyzed are at performance levels 2 and 3.

In short, the vast majority of teachers in the region may not have the digital skills needed to play an active role in ICT-based teaching-learning processes because they would not be able to perform online activities that are not basic or are unfamiliar. In the short term, this skills deficit implies a major barrier to the widespread implementation of online education in our countries. In the medium term, this is a call to strengthen teacher training in digital skills.