{"title":"Exploring digital transformation of teacher education in the Western Balkans: Case of Kosovo","authors":"Gazmend Qorraj, Fjolla Kaçaniku","doi":"10.3233/hsm-220063","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"BACKGROUND: The whole educational system from pre-university to university level has been challenged with the immediate pressure to transform during the lockdown period of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The question of how to ensure digital transformation in universities become topical at policy, institutional, and classroom practice dimensions. OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this study is to examine and explore how digital transformation in higher education in Kosovo is conceptualised in a changing context. The study focuses on teacher education as a pathway that links pre-university education with higher education system to ensure future teacher preparation. METHODS: The study used a qualitative research design. The data were collected through interviews with management staff (n = 3) and teacher educators (n = 7), and group interviews with student teachers (n = 15), at the University in Kosovo and teacher education institution. Following the principles of the hermeneutical circle, conceptualisations of digital transformation in teacher education were clustered into the following dimensions: (i) policy, (ii) organisation culture and management, and (iii) teaching and learning. RESULTS: The paper analyses the Western Balkans, specifically Kosovo, as the country faced the transition challenges including institutional building, limited administrative capabilities, and other challenges regarding educational process and digitalization. The paper contributes to the discussions with the emerging conceptualisations of digital transformation in teacher education by drawing from thematic areas concerning policy response mechanisms, teacher education policy as isolated from higher education framework, change management process, missing organisational culture, rigidity and resistance in teaching. CONCLUSIONS: The paper concludes that teacher education context should be reconceptualised within the higher education framework to better manage a transition and change settings for a shared conceptualisation and sustainable digital transformation.","PeriodicalId":13113,"journal":{"name":"Human systems management","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2022-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Human systems management","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3233/hsm-220063","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"MANAGEMENT","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The whole educational system from pre-university to university level has been challenged with the immediate pressure to transform during the lockdown period of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The question of how to ensure digital transformation in universities become topical at policy, institutional, and classroom practice dimensions. OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this study is to examine and explore how digital transformation in higher education in Kosovo is conceptualised in a changing context. The study focuses on teacher education as a pathway that links pre-university education with higher education system to ensure future teacher preparation. METHODS: The study used a qualitative research design. The data were collected through interviews with management staff (n = 3) and teacher educators (n = 7), and group interviews with student teachers (n = 15), at the University in Kosovo and teacher education institution. Following the principles of the hermeneutical circle, conceptualisations of digital transformation in teacher education were clustered into the following dimensions: (i) policy, (ii) organisation culture and management, and (iii) teaching and learning. RESULTS: The paper analyses the Western Balkans, specifically Kosovo, as the country faced the transition challenges including institutional building, limited administrative capabilities, and other challenges regarding educational process and digitalization. The paper contributes to the discussions with the emerging conceptualisations of digital transformation in teacher education by drawing from thematic areas concerning policy response mechanisms, teacher education policy as isolated from higher education framework, change management process, missing organisational culture, rigidity and resistance in teaching. CONCLUSIONS: The paper concludes that teacher education context should be reconceptualised within the higher education framework to better manage a transition and change settings for a shared conceptualisation and sustainable digital transformation.
期刊介绍:
Human Systems Management (HSM) is an interdisciplinary, international, refereed journal, offering applicable, scientific insight into reinventing business, civil-society and government organizations, through the sustainable development of high-technology processes and structures. Adhering to the highest civic, ethical and moral ideals, the journal promotes the emerging anthropocentric-sociocentric paradigm of societal human systems, rather than the pervasively mechanistic and organismic or medieval corporatism views of humankind’s recent past. Intentionality and scope Their management autonomy, capability, culture, mastery, processes, purposefulness, skills, structure and technology often determine which human organizations truly are societal systems, while others are not. HSM seeks to help transform human organizations into true societal systems, free of bureaucratic ills, along two essential, inseparable, yet complementary aspects of modern management: a) the management of societal human systems: the mastery, science and technology of management, including self management, striving for strategic, business and functional effectiveness, efficiency and productivity, through high quality and high technology, i.e., the capabilities and competences that only truly societal human systems create and use, and b) the societal human systems management: the enabling of human beings to form creative teams, communities and societies through autonomy, mastery and purposefulness, on both a personal and a collegial level, while catalyzing people’s creative, inventive and innovative potential, as people participate in corporate-, business- and functional-level decisions. Appreciably large is the gulf between the innovative ideas that world-class societal human systems create and use, and what some conventional business journals offer. The latter often pertain to already refuted practices, while outmoded business-school curricula reinforce this problematic situation.