The "Digital Facilitator": An Extended Profile to Manage the Digital Transformation of Swiss Vocational Schools

Summary

Digital transformation requires the field of education to increasingly deal with the interplay between the teachers’ individual development of digital competence and institutional integration and adoption of digital technology. This is especially crucial in the vocational education context, which is closer to the world of work and, therefore, more sensitive to the disruptive changes of digitalisation. This chapter addresses this issue by proposing the result of a project that aimed to identify a new professional profile in the context of dual vocational education in Switzerland. The Digital Facilitator is a new term that refers to a teacher with advanced digital competency who is an expert in facilitating digital innovation adoption within educational institutions. Thus, it constitutes a possible concrete way to address the issue of integrating the individual and the organisational perspectives related to digital transformation. The profile is discussed by presenting an analysis of acknowledged existing frameworks and by considering the specificities of the context in which it was developed. The opportunities and challenges associated with introducing the profile are also critically addressed.