Digital Competence for Industrial Revolution 4.0:
Implications to Teacher Professionalism
Soledad A. Ulep
University of the Philippines National Institutefor Science and Mathematics Education Development (UP NISMED)
Introduction
Unprecedented advancements in technology have been taking place very rapidly as evidenced
by the advent of Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0) which is characterized among others by big
data, internet of things, 3D printing, and robotics, all of which are related to digital technologies.
Given this reality, digital competence is important. Viewed as “the vital 21st-century skill forteachers and students,” it is “the confident and critical usage of the full range of digitaltechnologies for information, communication, and basic problem-solving in all aspects of life”(School Education Gateway, retrieved on 12 February 2020). Digital technologies are “electronic
tools, systems, devices, and resources that generate, store, or process data. Examples include
social media, online games, multimedia, and mobile phones” (State Government of Victoria,
Australia, 2019). The five areas of digital competence are information and data literacy,
communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem solving; andeach area has specific digital competences (School Education Gateway, retrieved on 12 February2020). This implies that teachers themselves must be digitally competent in these areas so thatthey can effectively facilitate the development of digital competence in their students.
Underlying the provisions of the Philippine Professional Standards for Teachers or PPST (2017) is
the principle of continuous improvement and lifelong learning of teachers. And so, in thecontext of IR 4.0, teachers are expected to upgrade and update their knowledge and skills andexercise values that are necessary for the fast changing times. Content knowledge andpedagogy, learning environment, diversity of learners, curriculum and planning, assessment andreporting, community linkages and professional linkages, and personal growth and professional
development are PPST’s seven domains which together with their corresponding strands
broadly covers the specific digital competences.
This paper will examine some of the specific digital competences under four of the areas ofdigital competence and relate them to pertinent standards stipulated in five of the domains of
PPST for the proficient, highly proficient, and distinguished career stages of teachers. In theprocess, it will draw implications to teacher professionalism.
Implications to Teacher Professionalism
Information and data literacy. This competence includes browsing, searching, filtering,evaluating, and managing data, information, and digital content.
Available on the web is a wealth of data, information, and digital content that teachers canaccess for their professional learning which ultimately can inform their professional practice.
They can efficiently and effectively make their access if they have the skills of browsing,searching, and filtering. A critical mind is necessary to evaluate if the resources that they accesscome from credible and reliable sources. Through reflection of their purposes and contexts,

1teachers can determine, use, and manage data, information, research results, e-books, videos,podcasts, lesson plans, activities, presentations, apps, and the like, that can deepen andbroaden their knowledge of content and pedagogical content to enhance their teaching andassessment practices. Such competence is consistent with the strand professional reflection andlearning to improve practice which is under the domain Personal Growth and Professional
Development in the PPST. It is noteworthy that in using these resources on the web, giving
credit to whom credit is due by acknowledging the source of ideas through citations is a goodpractice and demonstrates intellectual honesty.
Based on the author’s class observations, integrating in a lesson, a video clip taken from theweb, is an example of a practice that builds upon information and data literacy. Under PPST’s
Curriculum and Planning domain, proficient teachers are expected to “select, develop, organize,
and use appropriate teaching and learning resources, including ICT, to address learning goals.”
Appropriateness of the resource should not only be in relation to the attainment of lesson
objectives but also in relation to the learners’ needs, characteristics, and contexts as provided
for in the domain Diversity of Learners of PPST. Still in PPST’s Curriculum and Planning domain,
proficient teachers are expected to “plan, manage, and implement developmentally sequenced
teaching and learning process to meet curriculum requirements and varied teaching contexts.”
This implies that in adopting or adapting resources such as a video clip into a lesson, theteaching sequence should be designed so as to achieve coherence by establishing clear
connections among the ideas presented in the diferent parts of a lesson as well as ideas
presented across lessons. Hence, it is very important for teachers to process the ideas presented
in the video by finding out if the students correctly and clearly understood what they haveviewed and listened to, what these understandings are, and how these relate to their current
lesson as well as to their previous lessons.
Again, another example of building upon information and data literacy based on the author’sclass observations is the lesson integration of an interactive courseware in elementary schoolmathematics in English aimed at developing students’ higher order thinking skills as they learn
mathematics. In the different lessons in the courseware, students are required to think ofvarious ways of solving a problem thereby developing their creativity and to respond toquestions that capture their misconceptions thereby developing their critical thinking.
Developed by UP NISMED in collaboration with the Department of Science and Technology
Science Education Institute (DOST-SEI), DOST-Advaced Science and Technology Institute (DOSTASTI) and the Department of Education (DepEd), the resource in which each lesson consists of
the lesson development, exercises, and assessment, can be downloaded from the website of
DOST-SEI and can run on PCs, laptops, and netbooks. Teachers translate the lessons in grades 1
to 3 since mother tongue is used to teach mathematics in these grades. The competences
needed by teachers who use the courseware in their teaching are aligned with the expectationfrom highly proficient teachers to “promote effective strategies in the positive use of ICT tofacilitate the teaching and learning process” and to “develop and apply effective teachingstrategies to promote critical and creative thinking, as well as other higher order thinking skills,”
under PPST’s Content Knowledge and Pedagogy domain.
Still another example of building upon information and data literacy based on the author’s
involvement in teacher training programs is using GeoGebra, a free downloadable dynamic
software from the web, to actively engage students in the mathematics teaching-learning
process. For instance, teachers can develop tasks that will require students to individually or in2

groups, carry out using GeoGebra, mathematical explorations or investigations in algebra,
geometry, statistics, and trigonometry, say to see the effect of changing a certain quantity onother quantities. In the process, students learn to analyze, make conjectures, predict,generalize, evaluate, and justify. Later, they can prove the conjectures that they have formed
based on the relationships that they have observed among the quantities. For this kind of
student engagement to happen, teachers have to structure the learning environment so that it
will lend itself to student active involvement. Such is an expectation from proficient teachers as
stipulated in PPST’s domain Learning Environment. Specifically, they are to “manage classroom
structure to engage learners individually and in groups, in meaningful exploration, discovery,and hands-on activities within a range of physical learning environments.” They are also
expected “to maintain supportive learning environments that nurture and inspire learners toparticipate, cooperate, and collaborate in continued learning.” Moreover, they are to “apply arange of successful strategies that maintain learning environments that motivate learners towork productively by assuming responsibility for their own learning.”
Developing lessons that integrate or make use of available resources, say digital content fromthe web, can be done in the context of lesson study since this teacher professional development
model fosters collaborative professionalism (Hargreaves and Connors 2018). For instance,
guided by a long-term goal or research theme, teachers, by working collaboratively, can ensurethat the correct teaching sequence is followed, there is lesson coherence, and the lesson
objectives are addressed. They can also ensure that there is processing of the digital content interms of building up students’ understanding of the lesson. During the research lesson
implementation, observing how the digital content contributes to students’ thinking andlearning and discussing about such contribution during the post-lesson reflection areopportunities that lesson study provides. These activities are aligned with the PPST’s domain
Curriculum and Planning specifically in the strand professional collaboration to enrich teachingpractice, in which proficient teachers are expected to “participate in collegial discussions that
use teacher and learner feedback to enrich teaching practice.”
Communication and Collaboration: This competence includes interacting, sharing, andcollaborating through digital technologies and netiquette.
Teachers can interact among themselves, share information and resources, and collaborate toaccomplish certain tasks using digital technologies such as facebook, Skype, and emails. In
PPST’s domain Personal Growth and Professional Development particularly in the strand
professional links with colleagues, it is stipulated that very proficient teachers should be able to“contibute actively to professional networks within and between schools to improve knowledge
and enhance practice.” UP NISMED’s KaSaMa Teachers’ Online Community involving science andmathematics teachers and teacher educators as well as UP NISMED academic staff, is an
exampe of an online professional network. UP NISMED has a repository of relevant memoranda
from DepEd, learner’s modules, and teacher’s guides among others, which the community canaccess. Based on their knowledge and experiences teachers interact about how to addresscommon problems, for example, those related to teaching science through inquiry. UP NISMED
also conducts webinars such as on science inquiry, assessment, lesson study, and new topics inthe K to 12 science curriculum in which teachers belonging to the community can ask questions
to the resource person. Members and resource persons come from the Philippines and abroad.
Teachers’ activities such as these are also consistent with the expectation from highly proficientteachers to “initiate professional reflections and promote learning opportunities with colleagues

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to improve practice” which is under PPST’s Personal Growth and Professional Development
domain.
Another example of using digital technologies for communication and collaboration was the
cross-border education cooperation between the Philippines and Malaysia in 2017 undertaken
in relation to the APEC-Tsukuba-Khon Kaen Lesson Study Project. Through emails and Skype, thelesson study teams of the two countries collaboratively developed a lesson on energy efficiency
which the teacher of each country taught simultaneously in their respective class via Skype.
During the lesson implementation, students from each country took turns in asking andresponding to questions of students from the other country resulting to their better
understanding and appreciation of how energy is consumed and conserved in the two countries.
The two examples cited show that due to the availability of digital technologies, constraints infinances, time, and distance are no longer hindrances for teachers to interact, share, andcollaborate.
Another competence in communication and collaboration is netiquette (short for internet
etiquette), a code of “good behavior” in the internet (TechTerms 2017). Correct and proper
online communication should be based on values and traits such as honesty, reliability,
accountability, respect, discreetness, good judgment, keeping confidences, sensitivity, clarity,and conciseness.
Digital Content Creation: In relation to digital content, this competence includes developing,
integrating, and programming. (The succeeding discussion on Problem Solving will include
programming.)
As earlier mentioned in information and data literacy, teachers can integrate resources on the
web into their lessons depending on their purpose. Besides this, teachers can develop digitalcontent such as podcasts, e-books, and programs and also integrate existing digital content to
the ones that they are developing. Activities like these are consistent with PPST’s Curriculum
and Planning domain in which proficient teachers are expected to “select, develop, organize anduse appropriate teaching and learning resources, including ICT, to address learning goals.”
An example of podcasts found in UP Diliman’s College of Mass Communication website are UPNISMED’s Go Teacher Go! radio program’s episodes aired over UP’s community radio. School
teachers are the program’s discussants most of the time. They discuss activities, lessons, orteaching strategies that can enable students to understand better a particular topic and address
students’ common difficulties and misconceptions in science and mathematics.
Besides podcasts, UP NISMED staff created an interactive e-book using d-book on
Understanding Earthquakes based on a mathematics research lesson that used science as acontext. They developed the lesson collaboratively with a group of high school mathematics
teachers through lesson study. It is uploaded in the websites of CRICED and UP NISMED.
Problem Solving: This includes the creative use of digital technologies.
There are real-life problems that may be solved using digital technologies. Following are someexamples. For identifying the route that avoids heavy traffic, drivers use the Waze app in theirmobile phones. When abroad, so as to avoid getting lost, a foreigner can use Google maps in his

4mobile phone. Instead of wasting time waiting for a taxi to pass by a street, one can simply staywhere he/she is and just book a GrabTaxi and be informed about the taxi fare, the amount oftime that a taxi within the vicinity will fetch him/her, and the amount of time that the taxi willreach the destination. Then he/she can just go to the pick-up point when the taxi arrives. To
avoid long queues, one can shop online. To avoid rushing, one can do online flight check-in. To
save time in searching for relevant journal articles for a research, one only has to encode the key
words in Google search for a host of choices to come out.
A creative use of computers, a digital technology, is problem solving. In making a computer
solve problems, one has to engage in computational thinking. According to Jeanette Wing, acomputer scientist, “computational thinking is the thought processes involved in formulating aproblem and expressing its solution(s) in such a way that a computer – human or machine – caneffectively carry it out” (Wing, in Araya et al 2019). To know what computational thinking
entails, one has to be familiar with its elements which consist of concepts and practices (Groverand Pea 2017). The concepts include logic and logical thinking, algorithms and algorithmic
thinking, patterns and pattern recognition, abstraction and generalization, evaluation, andautomation. The practices include problem decomposition, creating computational artefacts,
testing and debugging, iterative refinement (incremental development), and collaboration andcreativity. Mathematics content and mathematical processes which are problem solving,reasoning, connection, communication, and representation involve most of these concepts andpractices. Hence, computational thinking can be developed in mathematics teaching andlearning. Engaging in computational thinking is consistent with PPST’s Content Knowledge andPedagogy domain specifically the expectation from highly proficient teachers to “develop andapply effective teaching strategies to promote critical and creative thinking, as well as otherhigher-order thinking skills.”
According to Grover and Pea (2017), programming is an especially useful platform for teachingcomputational thinking since it brings together several of the elements – both concepts andpractices – that are central to computational thinking.
On 3 February 2020, the author observed the results of the efforts of a group of teachers in
Cavite National Science High School in relation to their Project PRISM (Promoting Robotics
Integration in Science and Mathematics). In particular, their problem was how to show to thestudents of a grade 7 Science class what velocity and acceleration mean, among others. So theteachers programmed the robots which are in the form of a car to solve the problem. The car’s
casing was produced using the school’s 3D printer. The outdoor activity involving the robots thatthe students performed generated data on time and distance which were used as basis fordetermining speed, velocity, and acceleration that the students later represented visually usinggraphs. Besides their excitement in performing the hands-on activity, the connection between
the physical meaning and the visual representation of velocity and acceleration became veryclear to the students. This innovative approach in teaching velocity and acceleration wascollaboratively conceptualized by two Research teachers, one of whom is the Robotics Club
adviser and a Science teacher.
In the school’s Robotics Club where interested students are taught to program robots, somemembers have become better programmers than their Club adviser. They also have been
participating and winning in local and international competitions. Inspired by this achievement,
the local DepEd officials plan to train teachers of other public high schools in the place on5

robotics with the teachers in Project PRISM as trainers using the materials that they havedeveloped. When this plan is actualized, then based on PPST’s Domain on Curriculum and
Planning, the group of teachers may be considered as distinguished teachers who “model
exemplary skills and lead colleagues in the development and evaluation of teaching and learning
resources, including ICT, for use within and beyond the school.”
Conclusion
IR 4.0 necessitates digital competence in terms of information and data literacy, communicationand collaboration, digital content creation, and problem solving. In order to facilitate thedevelopment of digital competence among students, teachers themselves must be digitallycompetent. By meeting the standards set forth in the PPST for the different stages of theircareer with the areas of digital competence as context as they relate to the different domains of
PPST, teachers digital competence can be developed. These domains are Content Knowledge
and Pedagogy, Learning Environments, Diversity of Learners, Curriculum and Planning, andPersonal Growth and Personal Development. Thus, digital competence can be considerd as anintegral part of teacher professionalism.
Developing their own digital competence can be embedded in teachers’ regular practices suchas preparing and teaching lessons. Guided by a research theme, teachers’ engagement in lesson
study can help them to be digitally competent as they collaborate in designing andimplementing lessons, and reflecting on what they have learned about student thinking andlearning through those lessons.
Problem solving is definitely prevalent in IR 4.0. Being anchored on problem solving, developing
computational thinking is necessary for digital competence.
References:
Araya, R., Isoda, M., Gonzalez, O., and Inprasitha, M. (2019). Discussion Paper: A Framework for
Computational Thinking for the Transition to a Super Smart Society. Presented at the 2019 APEC-Tsukuba
International Conference in Tokyo, Japan.
Department of Education – Teacher Education Council (2017). Philippine Professional Standards for
Teachers. Research Center for Teacher Quality.
Grover, S. and Pea, R. (2017). Computational Thinking: A Competency whose Time Has Come.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322104135
Hargreaves, A. and O’Connor, M.T. (2018). Leading collaborative professionalism. Centre for Strategic
Education Series Paper #274.
School Education Gateway. Digital competence: the vital 21st-century skill for teachers and students.
Retrieved on 12 February 2020 fromhttps//www.schooleducationgateway.eu/en/pub/resources/tutorials/digital-competence-the vital-.htm
State Government of Victoria, Australia@2019. Digital Technologies. Retrieved on 12 February 2020 fromwww.education.vic.gov.au > teachers > teaching resources > digital > Pages
techterms.com > definition > netiquette (2017)6