The Impact of Teachers’ Digital Literacy on Their Online Teaching Practices and Experience: A Case Study

Juming Shen, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Xin Pan, Suzhou SIP School of Foreign Languages
Xuhui Jiao, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Xinchen Shen, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Juming Shen, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University 

https://doi.org/10.9743/JEO.2025.22.3.16

Abstract

Although online teaching can be affected by a number of factors, ranging from the usage of broadband and digital equipment to the skills of users, teachers’ digital literacy has been recognized as a key component that can impact the practices of online teaching considerably. This study takes Suzhou Singapore Industrial Park Foreign Language School (SF School), an international high school in China, as a case to investigate how teachers’ digital literacy level may impact their teaching practices and experiences. The findings of this research, although the digital literacy level of teachers who participated in this research is generally high, are not balanced in different aspects. Moreover, teachers did not have very positive reflections on the experiences and practices of online teaching during the period of Covid-19. Although teachers tend to attribute this to several aspects from both the student and technological side, they do not have much awareness about the required design of online teaching, which is an approach different from onsite teaching, and echoes the status of the unbalanced digital literacy of the teachers.

Keyword: education digitization, online learning and teaching, teacher’s digital literacy