Last December 21, in the Meeting Room of the Faculty of Education Sciences (Campus Vida), took place the defense of the doctoral thesis “Digital competence and school. Study of ethnographic case in two CEIP of Galicia”. The work has been carried out by Almudena Alonso Ferreiro, under the direction of Adriana Gewerc Barujel, coordinator of the Stellae Research Group.
The thesis inquired about the processes of appropriation that are carried out in the primary schools of Galicia around the regulations on digital competence. The work is based on an ethnographic approach, where Almudena Alonso immerses herself in the school routine in order to obtain a deep understanding of the complex reality of the school, with the challenge of capturing what happens there.
The research shows that the massive incorporation of technologies into the centers and the development of digital competence is a process full of contradictions that seems to refer to issues already worked, but with new nuances.
The most outstanding results warn of the relevance and need to dignify the figure of the ICT coordinator in the Autonomous Community of Galicia, to continue to focus on teaching in educational technology, and to attend to practices that are performed from centers with technologies, more beyond the instrumental and informational dimensions, which at a basic level have been the most worked by primary school children. It also points out the need to influence the structure of the system, since it greatly affects the process of integrating technologies into the centers.
The thesis shows, therefore, that much remains to be done in school in the field of educational technology, and points out the relation between the norm (Administration), practice (school) and theory (university) as the key to the real change in the day to day school.
The Doctoral Thesis Tribunal, that granted the qualification of distinction “cum laude” unanimously to the defended thesis, was composed of Mª Lourdes Montero Mesa (President), Cristina Alonso Cano (Secretary) and Iván M. Jorrín Abellán (Member).
