From leadership research to district action: Teachers’ online preparedness in times of crises: trends from Norway and US

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Abstract The closing of schools world-wide in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a rapid and unexpected shift from predominantly in-person teaching to online teaching practices. As teacher educators in the field of educational technology, we wondered about the preparedness of teachers for making the transition to fully online environments. Through an internationally distributed survey consisting of predominantly open-ended questions, we captured teachers’ perceptions of this transition. We aimed to inform our practice and that of other teacher educators about the strengths and weaknesses of professional development designed to develop teachers’ digital competence. In this paper, we present data from Norwegian (n = 574) and US (n = 239) teachers related to their elaborations on readiness. We qualitatively examined data for evidence of extent of preparedness and alignment to the pedagogical, ethical, attitudinal, and technical dimensions of digital competence. Findings indicated themes related to extent of preparedness, trends in preparation, focus on digital tools, teacher agency without autonomy, collaboration/networks, and challenges for work and learning lives. Findings informed implications and recommendations for the professional development of teachers’ digital competence at the teacher education, K-12 schools, and school policy/leadership levels. Keywords: Digital competence, Teacher education, K-12 schools, Online teaching, Nordic context, US context

Study methods

In this section, we discuss the methodological approach of this paper and highlight the most important issues related to our data analysis. This study was submitted to the George Mason University Institutional Review Board (IRB) Office and determined exempt from IRB review. In addition, The Norwegian Centre for Data Services were conferred with but as the online survey is without any personal data, the study was exempt from a formal registration process. The TRIO survey (Gudmundsdottir & Hathaway, 2020a) was a researcher-created, eight-item questionnaire that consisted of both closed and open-ended questions. Four closed-ended questions addressed consent, frequency of online teaching, country, and teaching level. Four open-ended questions that addressed elaboration on preparation, measures by schools/teachers to include vulnerable learners, additional comments on challenges and/or opportunities. Regarding content validity, relevance, and reliability of the survey tool, the questions on the survey were derived from those posed by the Norwegian Directorate (personal communication, March 20, 2020). Additionally, we had the questions reviewed by a content expert from each country. Open-ended questions were used so as not to limit the possible answers that teachers could provide. In other words, teachers provided their own perspectives rather than be limited by the assumptions of the researchers.

Limitations

In order to maintain anonymity and address ethical concerns, a comparative study of the perceptions of Norwegian teachers and US teachers was not possible on an individual level. However a comparison of the readiness and reflections from teachers on a country level is made.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Dawn M Hathaway; Greta B Gudmundsdottir; Matthew Korona. Teachers’ online preparedness in times of crises: trends from Norway and US. Education and Information Technologies (2023-04-11). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-11733-5

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.