Elementary school teachers’ perception of digital literacy education: Based on analysis of digital literacy teaching and learning materials shared on ‘Indischool’

Objectives This study focuses on examining the perception of digital literacy education by analyzing teaching and learning materials related to digital literacy education produced and shared by elementary school teachers. Methods To this end, we analyzed teaching and learning materials related to digital literacy shared through ‘Indie School’, a representative communication platform for elementary school teachers, and through this, we investigated when, what content, and why they are providing digital literacy education. Results First, teachers were mainly conducting digital literacy education using creative experiential activity time for upper grades, and the amount of teaching and learning materials showed a rapid increase starting in 2020. This can be said to show that teachers' interest in digital literacy education has increased rapidly since COVID-19, and that they recognize that upper grades are appropriate targets for digital literacy education. Second, it was confirmed that the learning content covered in the teaching and learning materials was concentrated on some content elements of digital literacy, and that some materials were not well differentiated from content elements of related concepts such as news literacy, media literacy, and digital citizenship. This suggests that teachers need a more specialized understanding of digital literacy concepts and characteristics. Third, teachers' digital literacy education objectives were broadly categorized into supporting digital literacy learning activities presented in textbooks, learners' low digital literacy levels, and preventing and resolving problems that appear in digital spaces. Conclusions Based on these results, this study focused on the need for teachers to have a more professional understanding of the concept of digital literacy, the need for support in various aspects to develop teaching and learning materials related to digital literacy, the need for development and distribution of teaching and learning materials for evaluation purposes and the need for research into appropriate teaching and learning methods.