The Digital Competences of Special Education Teachers in Mexico in Times of Pandemic

Abstract

In the face of COVID-19 and the consequent transition from face-to-face learning to different modalities of distance learning, both teachers and students faced challenges (such as the rising costs to pay for internet services, connectivity failures, and the lack of knowledge for to operate software, etc.). This paper aims to assess the level of concretion of digital skills of 140 teachers who work in Mexican schools offering special education to a population with learning barriers in basic and upper secondary levels. This vulnerable population was more affected than others by the scant attention given to teacher training in the use of specialized information and communication technologies. For the research process, the methodology used included an initial contact with 897 special education teachers who participated in virtual workshops convened through the Internet. Subsequently, the authors established an intentional sample of 140 who answered a questionnaire in Google forms. The information was submitted to a descriptive statistical analysis and mapped by entities of the country through the Geographic Information System and the ArcGIS program. The results show low levels of concretion of digital teaching skills, according to the Common Framework for Digital Teaching Skills of the National Institute of Educational Technologies and Teacher Training of the Government of Spain (with some discrepancy between the standards of each entities), which are explained by the diversity of learning needs presented in the population that these teachers serve, as well as by the scarce resources available, as evidenced during the period studied (04-2020 to 12-2021).