# National Policies and Services for Digital Competence Advancement in Estonia

Mart Laanpere, Linda Helene Sillat, Piret Luik, Piret Lehiste, Kerli Pozhogina

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Mart Laanpere, Linda Helene Sillat, Piret Luik, Piret Lehiste, Kerli Pozhogina. National Policies and Services for Digital Competence Advancement in Estonia. IFIP World Conference on Computers in Education (WCCE), Aug 2022, Hiroshima, Japan. pp.675-686, 10.1007/978-3-031-43393-1_60 hal-05533300

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# National Policies and Services for Digital Competence Advancement in Estonia

Mart Laanpere¹(✉) , Linda Helene Sillat¹ , Piret Luik² , Piret Lehiste³, and Kerli Pozhogina⁴

¹ Tallinn University, 10120 Tallinn, Estonia
{martl,sillat}@tlu.ee

² University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
piret.luik@ut.ee

³ Järveküla School, 75312 Peetri, Estonia

⁴ Agency of Education and Youth, 10119 Tallinn, Estonia
kerli.pozogina@harno.ee

**Abstract.** Just like the rest of the EU, Estonia has prepared a national strategy for the next 15 years and this strategy focuses on a smarter, digitally transformed and sustainable economy and society. Digital competence of citizens is an important prerequisite for wide-scale digital transformation in industry and society at large. This paper describes and analyzes the coordinated activities at the national level to create a coherent system of services for assessing, developing and making use of digital competence among learners and teachers on different levels of education.

**Keywords:** Digital competence · competence frameworks · education policy · digital innovation

## 1 Introduction

Estonia is a tiny North-European country that was eager to realign its governance and education systems to democratic Western values as soon as it escaped from the ruins of Soviet Union in 1991. Being close to Finland regarding geography, economy, culture and language helped us to learn from the best, as the Finnish educational system has been considered an exemplary one since the turn of the century. Within last 25 years, systematic educational reforms have resulted with a success story in relation to the Estonian school system. In 2018, the OECD PISA study ranked Estonian 8-graders the best across Europe in all three categories: reading, math and science skills. In 2019, the Centre for European Policy Studies introduced a new index for Readiness for Digital Lifelong Learning, where Estonia ranked on top among EU member countries. Whether there is any causal relationship between excellent academic achievements and the digital competence of Estonian students, remains to be demonstrated by future research. One contributing factor might also be the general advancement in digitalization of the society and governance across all levels and sectors. According to the European Commission's
Digital Economy and Society Index [1], Estonia has ranked 1st place in the EU on Digital public services for several years in a row, while being in 5th place when it comes to digital skills of the whole population. This paper explores the potential impact to this success story of the recent policies, actions and results in teachers' and learners' digital competence development in Estonia.

## 2 Background

Estonia's efforts to leverage technology for teaching and learning began in 1997 with an ambitious national program called Tiger Leap, which resulted with equipping all schools with modern computer labs and Internet access by 2001 [2]. The program was coordinated by a small foundation that was established through a public-private partnership, it succeeded in engaging various actors on macro (national), meso (regional) and micro (local) level in joint efforts of digitalization of schools. Local municipalities made significant contributions to funding the technology procurements, hiring IT specialists to schools and building connectivity. The follow-up strategy called Tiger Leap Plus 2001–2005 shifted the focus on upscaling the digital innovation in education through integrating educational technologies to all levels and sectors of primary and secondary school curricula. The main action was massive teacher education: almost 80% of Estonian teachers attended 80-h ICT training based on Intel's Teach to the Future program. The first national framework for teachers' ICT skills was drafted by a group of local experts in 2001, but it was never legitimized or recognized by the Ministry of Education. The third national strategy Learning Tiger [2] focused on developing e-learning platforms, resources and competences in 2006–2009. A representative expert group was formed to design a modern framework for teachers' educational technology competence, inspired by the National Educational Technology Standard for Teachers (NETS-T) issued by the International Society for Technology in Education in 2008 [3]. This framework served as a basis for designing the new massive in-service teacher education program DigiTiger jointly with 20 + trainers who gained their experience during the previous program. This community of trainers covered geographically the whole territory of Estonia, all of them had to get the formal qualification of adult educators on level 5 of the Estonian Qualification Framework. Within the next 4 years, more than 70% of all primary and secondary teachers in the country passed the DigiTiger training program that included development of didactically sound e-learning resources [4]. These open online learning resources were shared through the new national repository Koolielu, becoming inspiration for other teachers.

In parallel, the reforms of the national curricula for primary and secondary education aligned with the digitalisation strategies. First, ICT as a cross-curricular theme was introduced in curricula in 2001, followed by introduction of the national test of students' ICT skills between 2003 and 2005 [5]. In 2011, the new concept of school informatics was announced, bringing to curricula digital communication and content production skills, but also geoinformatics, robotics, mechatronics, software engineering and data analysis. In 2014, digital competence was introduced in national curricula as one of the eight key competences. It is defined as "*the ability to use developing digital technology for coping in a quickly changing society for learning, acting as a citizen as well as communicating in*
communities; to use digital means for finding and preserving information and to evaluate
the relevance and trustworthiness of the information; to participate in creating digital
content; including creation and use of texts, images, multimedia; to use suitable digital
tools and methods for solving problems, to communicate and cooperate in different
digital environments; to be aware of the dangers of the digital environment and know
how to protect one's privacy, personal information and digital identity; to follow the same
moral and value principles as in everyday life" [6]. It is easy to notice the full compliance
of this definition with the European digital competence standard for citizens, DigComp
[7].

While the first three digitalization strategies were separate from any other strategic
planning instruments, the situation changed in 2012 when the civic initiative for creating
the first overarching education strategy included digital goals in more generic framework.
The Estonian Lifelong Learning Strategy 2020 [8] comprised the most important priori-
ties of further development of Estonian educational system until the year 2020, reaching
from primary and basic education to professional education and adult in-service train-
ing. One of its five strategic goals was the Digital Turn in lifelong learning, across all
levels and forms of education. The objective was to apply modern digital technology
in learning and teaching in a more efficient way and to improve the digital skills of the
general population. The implementation of Digital Turn was delayed for one year due
to the COVID19 pandemic, which is why the final analysis of its effectiveness is not
yet completed. However, the studies on coping strategies of Estonian schools during
the pandemic have demonstrated that availability of modern interactive textbooks and
Open Educational Resources helped our schools to continue effective teaching in online
distance mode [9].

The next national education strategy foresees development of digital competence, content and platforms that help improve the accessibility, diversity and efficiency of education by 2035. There will be significant investment in developing digital infrastructure for next-generation ecosystem of educational services, including digitized curricula, automatized Learning Analytics, Artificial Intelligence applications for flexible Learning Paths supporting self-regulated learning and formative assessment.

Digital competence is an important target also on societal level at large. Estonia's Digital Society Development Plan for 2030 emphasizes the need for large-scale in-service and retraining initiatives that aim to lessen the digital skills gap among employees in all sectors of our economy. It also highlights the importance of a rapid increase in the number of professionals having advanced IT skills that should help to create new jobs with higher added value in IT sector.

Digital competence development in Estonia is coordinated by the Digital Compe-
tence Task Force Group (DCTF Group) established by the National Education & Youth
Board of Estonia (HARNO), which is a government agency of the Estonian Ministry of
Education and Research. The DCTF Group involves experts from the HARNO agency,
Tallinn University, University of Tartu and schools. The group meets monthly and it
aims to adapt, validate and pilot digital competence frameworks and respective assess-
ment instruments on the national level. The DCTF Group reports twice a year on the
results and developments of its work to the Digital Competence Advisory Board, which
includes 30 + representatives from the following strategically important organizations:
Estonian Association of Educational Technologists, Estonian Association for Advance-
ment of Vocational Education, Estonian Teachers' Association, University of Tartu, Esto-
nian Informatics Teachers' Association, Estonian Association of Kindergarten Teachers,
Tallinn University, Estonian Qualifications Authority, Estonian Association of Heads of
Schools, and Ministry of Education and Research. The Advisory Board evaluates the
deliverables of the DCTF Group, then outlines and confirms the detailed action plan for
the next period. Below we will introduce the main achievements of the DCTF Group
over the last three years.

3 Digital Competence Definition and Underlying Conceptual Frameworks

Digital competence is considered an important 21st century skill. However, there are different definitions of digital competence and it has changed over the years. Already in 2006, the European Commission included digital competence in the list of eight key competences for lifelong learning and the importance of this competence has been only growing since then. As the universally accepted definition of digital competence was missing until 2013 in Europe, the meaning and scope of this concept has been varying. While some authors interpret digital competence as a synonym of information and communication technology (ICT) literacy [10], others expand it by adding the use of digital technologies for problem-solving [11]. However, some definitions of digital competence seem to be closer to the concept of critical media literacy [12].

In parallel with national curriculum development in Estonia emerged the need to
define the students' digital competence in the local educational context. The national
framework for learners' digital competence was created in line with the European Com-
mission's framework DigComp 2.1, which includes five dimensions of digital compe-
tence: information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content
creation, digital safety, and digital problem-solving [7].

In addition to the translated and localized competence model we developed a publicly
accessible set of detailed assessment criteria for each key stage of education, linked to the
five dimensions of the learners' digital competence framework. There is also an adapted
version of the assessment criteria for learners with special needs which is included in
the curriculum, published on the national portal of digital competence<fnref n="1" />. Teachers can
use these to assess student progress in building digital competence within their taught
courses.

4 Instruments

This chapter describes the main instruments for self-assessment of digital competence created and/or promoted nationwide by DCTF Group.

<footnote n="1">1 https://digipadevus.ee.</footnote>
## 4.1 Digital Mirror: Self-assessment of School's Digital Maturity

DigitalMirror<fnref n="2" /> is a web-based tool that allows any school team to self-assess the digital maturity of their organization as whole, then to use this data for benchmarking yourself with other schools. The tool also allows planning a whole-school digital strategy, as well as aggregated strategy for all schools in the city or district. The Digital Maturity framework was inspired by ideas of Michael Fullan [13], who claims that knowledge from three domains (technology, pedagogy and change management) should be combined for successful whole-school policy on digital innovation. Pedagogical innovation indicators of Digital Mirror were drawn from Estonian national strategy for lifelong learning. The Digital Maturity scale was taken from EduVista framework, that was created within iTEC project [14] and inspired by the Capability Maturity Model [15]. The Digital Maturity model of Digital Mirror has 15 indicators in total, distributed between 3 domains: (1) pedagogical innovation, (2) change management and (3) digital infrastructure. Each indicator is evaluated on a 5-point scale, which is inspired by the EduVista framework [14]:

A. **Exchange**: Innovation has no impact on core processes, technology is used only by a small group of innovators, school leaders are not involved.

B. **Enrich**: School leaders support innovation on wider scale, they coordinate uptake of innovative practices on the school level.

C. **Enhance**: School begins to redesign and digitally transform the core processes so, impact goes beyond immediate use of technology in classroom.

D. **Extend**: Digital transformation has taken place and technology is used ubiquitously.

E. **Empower**: Innovation extends beyond institutional boundaries, school uses learners as co-authors etc.

Schools' digital maturity assessment process in Digital Mirror starts with creating the **Self-assessment report** which describes the current level of a school's digital maturity. For the initial **Individual** assessment phase, the school principal or other knowledgeable staff member fills in a quick evaluation form. In the next phase (**Group** assessment) a digital task force group consisting of 3-8 active staff members validates the initial evaluation report by providing comments and evidence (links or uploaded resources) for each indicator level making the decision more grounded. Online group discussion and argumentation is strongly encouraged next to each indicator, to reach consensus. Optionally, schools have the possibility to re-validate their group assessment by inviting external experts or a group of teachers from other schools to visit their school for lesson observations, interviews and confirmation (**Peer** assessment phase). Finally, the school principal confirms the validated report and decides whether to make the report public or just share it with selected persons (e.g. local government) (Fig. 1).

DigitalMirror has been used by more than 80% of Estonian schools, first in 2016 and then in 2019. School teams did set target levels for each of the 15 indicators and then described specific actions that would help to achieve these targets. For better cooperation between school owners and schools, school owners can see drafts of school digital strategies and contribute during the planning process. After adding an action plan to school's digital strategy, the strategy can be confirmed and published by the principal.

<footnote n="2">² https://digipeegel.ee.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 1. A school's self-assessment report in DigitalMirror, green dots indicate strategic goals.</figcaption></figure>

The results of Estonian schools' (n = 499) self-assessment with DigitalMirror were analyzed in [16], K-means cluster analysis identified three categories of schools located on different stages of digital transformation:

1. **Schools in the early stage of transition**, where digital transformation is not yet guided by well-defined organizational goals, leadership and change management practices, while some teachers have already started to implement innovative teaching and learning practices;

2. **Schools focused on digital innovation** (the largest group, more than half of all schools nationwide), where the digital transformation process has resulted in some structural changes, but change management is not participatory and digitally enhanced teaching and learning practices not yet adopted by the majority of teachers. These schools often report issues with their digital infrastructure, including limited access to WIFI and digital devices.

3. **Digitally mature schools** are learning organizations that have adopted participatory and evidence-based change management practices to redesign teaching and learning, resulting with wide-scale adoption of digital pedagogy and changes in teachers' and students' roles.

Digital competence of teachers and students is one indicator of school's digital maturity in DigitalMirror, but in order to rank the school on level 3, the team has to provide evidence that a majority of the teachers and students have reached the expected level. In order to collect such evidence, additional assessment tools are needed. Below we will describe the available instruments for assessing the digital competence of teachers and learners.
## 4.2 Digital Competence of Educators

As mentioned above, the initial digital competence framework for Estonian teachers was based on ISTE NETS-T model and it was distributed as an annex to the teachers' qualification standard in a format of 5-page PDF file presenting a self-assessment rubric with five levels of proficiency. This rubric was rarely used by anyone, as it was perceived by teachers as too complex and long. Although there was an initiative to develop a more user-friendly online instrument for self- and peer-assessment of teachers' digital competence [17], it was not adopted on the wide scale. The next attempt to model and standardize the educators' digital competence was associated with the renewal of the national qualification standard for teachers in 2017, which integrated in teachers' core competences the ability to enhance the teaching activities and learning environment with technology. The new version of the teachers' qualification standard was released in 2019, redefining the digital competence of educators in line with the new European standard DigCompEdu [18]. This time the DCTF Group decided to integrate or embed the digital competence within the main professional competences required from all teachers. Notice the similarity with national strategies for school digitalization that used to be separated from other macro-level planning instruments until 2014 when digital innovation was included in the national strategy for lifelong learning. There is still also a localized Estonian teachers' digital competence framework, an adaptation of DigCompEdu which defines educators' digital competence through 6-dimensions: professional development and engagement, digital resources, teaching and learning, assessment, empowering learners, and facilitating learners' digital competence. This framework is published online and is used mostly as design guidelines by teacher trainers, course designers and developers of self-assessment tools for teachers.

DCTF Group members have contributed to European R&D projects aiming at new digital competence self-assessment instruments for teachers. The first of such instruments was developed in collaboration with the European Commission's Joint Research Center (JRC Seville) and it comprised an online knowledge-based test with multiple-choice items on six proficiency levels: newcomer, explorer, integrator, expert, leader and pioneer [18]. After the initial piloting of the test and interviews with participants we concluded that using a knowledge-based test for assessing teachers' digital competence was not suitable in the Estonian context. On one hand, the test itself had some serious issues regarding content validity. Second, the Estonian teachers refused the idea of being tested, as they usually never take any tests after graduating from university. After that we focused on designing a localized self-assessment instrument catered towards the needs of educators. The DCTF Group created then self-assessment instruments for educators in both general schools and higher education, in Estonian and Russian, in various formats that can be easily copied and modified by anyone: Google Form survey, LimeSurvey XML import file, MS Excel spreadsheet file and QTI-compliant TAO import file. This self-assessment instrument includes 25 statements (e.g. 'I use digital technology to support learners with different needs and abilities') with response options on a 6-point proficiency scale (including level 0). The previous bad experience with the too extensive CNETS self-assessment rubric inspired the DCTF group to engage 20 expert teachers in participatory design research to re-designed the teachers' self-assessment scale. The
new scale is more compact and describes only three main proficiency levels in a uni-
form manner for all indicators, while allowing teachers to place themselves between two
levels:

0) I am not aware of it,

1) Beginner: I know what it is, but don't apply it yet

2) Interim level: beyond beginner level, but not an expert yet,

3) **Expert**: I am quite knowledgeable and skilled regarding it, applying it regularly

4) Interim level: beyond expert level, but nor a pioneer yet,

5) **Pioneer**: I am evaluating and designing strategies and leading implementation regarding it.

The instrument was piloted by the DCTF Group in 2019 with Estonian educators in primary, secondary and higher education, its reliability and validity was confirmed [19].

In 2021 the DCTF Group members from Tallinn University were contracted by EC JRC to coordinate piloting and validation of a new all-European self-reflection tool SELFIE for Teachers, which is based on the DigCompEdu model. The instrument includes 32 self-reflection items and a 6-point proficiency scale that describes desired performance in detail for each level. The items and the user interface of this online tool was translated into Estonian, Lithuanian, Italian and Portuguese languages and piloted in four countries with more than 3200 primary and secondary school teachers. After successful piloting and confirming both the reliability and validity of the instrument, the tool was translated to all official languages of European Union and made accessible to all teachers in Europe [20].

While we now have two competing instruments for self-assessment of teachers’ digital competence (SELFIE for Teachers and locally developed questionnaires), both have their uses and can easily complement each other. SELFIE is a preferred tool for single teachers who are interested in self-reflection. However, it would be very difficult for schools or the Ministry to use SELFIE for informing themselves about progress or integrating the self-assessment results in some other information system - e.g. DigitalMirror or the database of teacher training courses. So, there is still a need for our locally developed, more flexible, simplified self-assessment tool. For instance, the DCTF Group has cooperated with a large group of teacher trainers who have designed a large number of in-service training courses to raise various aspects of teachers’ digital competence. This cooperation resulted with a clear mapping of all available courses to DigCompEdu competence indicators and also to proficiency levels.

The community of teacher trainers involves more than 80 experienced and qualified adult educators, who work mostly as teachers in primary and secondary schools (61 of them), in vocational school (3) or preschool (7), trainers in private companies (3) or lecturers in university (9). To initiate this process, the DCTF Group created a detailed guidelines for trainers on the mapping process that involved six stages:

* familiarize the trainers’ team with the structure of DigCompEdu,

* annotate your course content with skill-based keywords from DigCompEdu,

* review the learning outcomes of your course using the skill-based keywords from DigCompEdu,

* analyse your new learning outcomes and map each of these to one of the six proficiency levels,
* define the prerequisite level of skills for your course in accordance with DigCompEdu and its proficiency levels,

* plan the further adaptation of your course to avoid overlaps with other courses and to address the “empty areas” that are not covered by courses yet.

The next step will be to build a recommender system that automatically suggests some relevant courses to a teacher who has just completed her self-assessment of her digital competence. Such functionality has already been implemented in the Belgian DigiSnap service [21] that served as an inspiring example for us.

## 4.3 Digital Competence of Students

The national agency responsible for quality assurance in education has been developing an online platform for electronic tests since 2012. In many school subjects, the level tests are conducted online at the end of the school year for a random sample of students in primary and lower-secondary schools. The students do not receive a grade for this test, only aggregated feedback is made available for teacher, school leader and ministry. The national test on digital competence was piloted in 2018 using automatically graded tasks in the national web-based Examination Information System (EIS). The test was designed for students in grades 9 and 12 and it has been repeated also in 2019 and 2021. The test was designed by a group of experts representing three main universities and association of computer science teachers. The test contains 24 multiple choice items in five groups related to European digital competence model DigComp 2.1:

* Information and data literacy – 5 tasks

* Digital communication and collaboration – 6 tasks

* Digital content creation – 6 tasks

* Digital safety – 5 tasks

* Digital problem solving – 2 tasks.

Figure 2 below demonstrates two items from the test, the first one belongs to information and data literacy category, the second to digital safety category. A psychometric analysis of the students’ digital competence test was conducted in 2022 by members of the DCTF Group together with an external psychometry expert, using the responses of 200 students from grades 8 and 11 who took the test in 2021. Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed satisfactory factor loadings and values for the main fit indices ($\chi^2 = 9174$, df = 4554, p < .001, RMSEA = 0.02, CFI = 0,87). Item Analysis with IRT confirmed suitable difficulty levels and discrimination for majority of test items, only one item was an outlier and had to be removed.

An alternative online self-assessment tool was created in 2020 for lower- and upper-secondary students. This tool consists of 45 descriptions of digital activities representing the competence indicators and assessment criteria described in the learners’ digital competence model. The learner does not have to solve the tasks given in the self-evaluation tool but evaluates on the basis of the given 6-point scale whether they can solve the tasks given in the self-evaluation tool. The tool was piloted in 2020 using the think aloud method with two students and after the revisions were made 324 students from three secondary schools filled in the self-evaluation tool in 2021 and wrote comments
<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>

You need to share some video, image and text files with your classmates after a class trip.
Please select the most appropriate medium for sharing for each file.

<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 2. Two examples of digital competence test items.</figcaption></figure>

suggesting ideas for improving the wording of the scale. After the second piloting round the tool was revised again and is now publicly accessible for schools to use in different digital, editable formats<fnref n="3" />: Google Form, TAO, MS Excel and Limesurvey [22].

To standardize this large variety of assessment instruments, a set of detailed digital competence assessment criteria for key stage 1, 2 and 3 were developed by the DCTF group and published on the Digital Competence portal. In addition, a simplified version of this assessment rubric was created for learners with special educational needs. Having a variety of assessment instruments available was an important first step, but the schools needed also DigComp-compliant learning resources that would help the teachers to develop learners’ digital skills. DCTF group along with two invited experts designed a guiding implementation framework and related online course on Moodle platform that schools can download, modify and re-use with their students in grades 4–9.

<footnote n="3">³ https://digipadevus.ee/oppija-digipadevusmudel/enesehindamise-kusimustik/.</footnote>
# 5 Conclusions

This paper describes the systemic work on analyzing, modelling and raising the digital competence of teachers and learners in Estonia, a small Northern European country that has demonstrated success in educational reforms, academic achievements of students, readiness for digital education and also digital public services. The experience of long-term collaboration between experts from academia, practitioners “from the field”, specialists from the national agency of education and high-level educational policy makers in Estonia might serve as an inspiring case study for other countries which are still struggling with wide scale uptake of digital innovations in education.

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