Fourth Industrial Revolution and digital competences of teachers

Abstract

The new era of the 4IR requires changes in teachers’ initial education and in their professional advancement. Serbia is
a developing country whose institutions of education are technologically underdeveloped and whose expansion in the field of
digitalization is still insufficient to be on par with the developed western countries. The authors’ research goal was to determine
whether potential improvement in teachers’ digital competences has occurred. The general hypothesis postulated implied a
low level of the use of digital tools in schools on the territory of Serbia. The descriptive method and scaling technique were
used. The research results show that science and technology teachers apply digital tools while teaching more frequently than
the teachers of social sciences and humanities. The research implies that a strategic approach to Serbian teachers’ digital
education is necessary even during their undergraduate studies by introducing digital technology courses and subjects in the
conventional academic curricula.

Keywords: Education, Digital competences, Teachers, Serbia, Fourth Industrial Revolution