Teachers' Digital Competence and Continuous Professional Development in the Age of Digitalisation

The study concludes that AI is no longer a future idea in education, It is already here, that’s reflected in every teacher's daily life, so what we expect from teachers and what professional expertise means. This study shows our field is at a turning point in the field of digital education. We have plenty of frameworks, research findings, and policy advice related to digital technology. But we still struggle with unclear definitions, systems that don’t line up, and weak understanding of how digital skills connect to ongoing teacher training. This article explored that the mentioned tensions cannot be solved solely through the elaboration of small competence frameworks and the expansion of continuous professional development programmes. Rather, what is effective is a conceptual reorientation and a transition from conceiving digital competence as a static representation of skills to be imparted to teachers. At last, to reconceptualise it as a dynamic professional capacity that is cultivated through recursive engagement with critical inquiry, adaptive learning, and institutionally supported agency, the Adaptive Digital Professionalism (ADP) model advanced a conceptual apparatus for this reorientation. So the CPD of teachers in the digital era ultimately requires strong acknowledgement that teachers are not dependent users of technology, but they are the professional agents who shape the role of technology in the lives of learners. In this context, Digital competence is understood as a threshold to be crossed, but a professional orientation needs to be continuously cultivated with the help of continuous professional development.  

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