Learning and Teaching in the Digital Era

Education is one of the cornerstones for countries’ socio-economic development, and technology and innovation are ways to take it  everywhere. Accordingly, at ProFuturo we believe that digital education is one of the most powerful tools for transforming the world.

Our digital education programme was launched in 2016, in a challenging initiative shared by Fundación Telefónica and "La Caixa" Foundation to reduce the educational divide in the world by means of a proposal underpinned by technology and innovative teaching-learning experiences to bring quality digital education to children in vulnerable communities. In the last four years, our programme has benefited 11.5 million children and has trained over 400,000 teachers in 38 countries of Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.

As the catalysts for learning and pivotal players in achieving meaningful change in education quality, teachers are at the core of the programme’s success. The global and technological society of the 21st century needs digital teachers with specific competences to place technology at the service of the teaching model and to introduce it into the classroom with a view to boosting education quality. At ProFuturo, we focus on teacher training with a view to enhancing the way education harnesses technology.

The purpose of this document is to further our commitment to people who engage in lifelong learning. Especially to teachers, in their complex and paramount work that combines their own lifelong learning and the task of educating those who wish to learn in the digital age. The document presents a holistic view of the complex processes of learning and education, and incorporates new language in the description of the specific competences to help enhance these processes and strengthen the professional development of educators.

The Global Framework of Competence for Learning in the Digital Age (GFCLDA) and the Global Framework of Competence for Education in the Digital Age (GFCEDA) are living documents that can and must be adjusted to account for different social and national contexts. The idea is to provide a starting point for reflection among the educational community on what it means to learn and teach in the digital age, and on the pivotal role played by teachers in both processes.