They Need More Than Technology-Equipped Schools: Teachers' Practice of Fostering Students' Digital Protective Skills

Abstract

The intense use of digital media among children and adolescents raises concerns about online risks. In response, digital literacy frameworks for formal education usually include a set of protective skills. Considering that teachers have the responsibility to implement such frameworks, this study investigates factors associated with teachers’ practices of fostering students’ digital protective skills. Therefore, data from a survey conducted with 315 teachers in the state of Thuringia, Germany, was analyzed. The findings indicate positive associations between the importance teachers attribute to digital protective skills, the knowledge they have about guidelines for media education, their formal media training, and their media and technology use in class. Besides, the analysis revealed associations with school type, subject taught, and teacher age. Conversely, the factors of human and technological resources did not yield significant effects in the regression model. The final model explained 48% of the variance in the teachers’ practices of fostering protective skills.