The Rhetoric of Digitalization in Italian Educational Policies: Situating Reception among Digitally Skilled Teachers

The author presents and discusses findings from qualitative research on the Italian reception of the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators, a document stressing the relevance of digital competences for teaching. Textual analysis is conducted on that and other relevant discourses on digitalization that are part of a general process of Europeanization of the educational space (Lawn & Lingard; 2002; Dale & Robertson, 2009; Grek, 2010; Lawn & Grek, 2012; Nordin, 2015). The research also observes practices and representations enacted by a selected group of digitally skilled teachers from Italian primary and lower secondary schools. The main findings are: 1) there is no clear definition of teachers’ digital skills either provided by national educational authorities or unambiguously laid out in teachers’ interpretations; 2) nevertheless, pro-active mobilization and attitudes toward teachers’ individual upgrading of digital skills seems to be a cornerstone of the Italian rush to digitalization; 3) at the moment, the pressure to digitalize from European recommendations and supranational, reform-promoting bodies do not seem to succeed in grasping unseen factors such as teachers’ situated negotiations and practices.