Teaching in a Digital Environment (TIDE): Defining and measuring teachers' capacity to develop students' digital information and communication skills

The study presented in this paper consisted in defining a Teaching in a Digital Environment (TIDE) capacity construct and developing a performance-based test to measure Chilean teachers' ability to teach students how to solve information and communication tasks in a digital environment. The test was applied to a sample of 828 in-service teachers in Chile, together with a characterization questionnaire. Results showed that very few Chilean teachers mastered all the tasks and that only one third were able to provide students with orientations in solving information and communication tasks, revealing that the majority are not playing a mediation role in a digital environment. In relation to explaining variables, science and younger teachers with more years of teaching experience performed better in the test. Nevertheless the low explanation provided by the variables included suggests that variables that have previously accounted for teachers ICT integration are not as good in predicting TIDE capacity. This shows the relevance of developing mixed methods research that together with quantitative data provides qualitative data to help explain this capacity in greater depth.