Exploring the Potential of Self-Assessment for Teachers’ Development of ICT Competencies and Beliefs

Abstract

We evaluate the effects of an online self-assessment tool on teachers’ competencies and beliefs about information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education. The causal impact of the tool is evaluated through a randomized encouragement design involving 7,391 lower secondary teachers across 11 European countries. Short-run impact estimates show that the use of the tool led teachers to critically revise their technology-enhanced teaching competencies (−0.14 standard deviations [SD]) and their beliefs about the use of ICT in education (−0.35 SD), while no impact on teachers’ ICT training is found. The effects are concentrated among teachers in the top-end tail of the distribution of pre-treatment outcomes. We provide suggestive evidence that the feedback score provided by the tool triggered such results by providing a negative information shock