Russian School Principals’ Beliefs about Digital Competences of Educational Process’ Participants

Abstract

This study investigates into Russian school principals’ beliefs about the requirements that digital transformation of schools imposes on students, parents, educators and administrators. Answers to an open-ended questionnaire obtained from 7,189 schools representing all administrative districts of the Russian Federation were analyzed using natural language processing technology. Responses were categorized according to the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu).
In general, responses reflect the use of information technology by the relevant groups of participants in the educational process, educators assigning the greatest significance to selection and distribution of educational content, students to information search and communication, parents to communication, control and safety, and administrators to digital interactions. However, the spectrum of digital competences attributed by respondents to every group of participants in the educational process is rather narrow. Low occurrence of most DigCompEdu framework categories in questionnaire responses allows to conclude that school principals have a poor understanding of many important dimensions of digital competences.