The educational structure of digital artisans: a qualitative study based on grounded theory

As the mainstay of the highly skilled talent team, digital artisans are of great significance in promoting industrial transformation and upgrading, accelerating the pace of digital as well as realising Vision 2035. To analyse the structure of the core educational elements of digital artisans, based on the procedural grounded theory, 30 digital artisans were selected as the objects, and with the help of in-depth interview data, the initial codes were extracted from the original data through the process of open coding—spindle coding—selective coding, which was integrated to form 33 concepts and 12 categories, and further refined into 4 main categories. The results show that, as a rich, multidimensional concept, the elements of digital artisan education are divided into ‘knowledge structure,’ ‘ability structure,’ ‘quality structure’, and ‘digital structure.’ The ‘knowledge structure’ includes the dimensions of basic knowledge, professional knowledge, and specific knowledge; the ‘competence structure’ includes the dimensions of basic competence, professional competence, and specific competence; and the ‘competence structure’ consists of the dimensions of basic competence, professional competence, and specific competence. The ‘knowledge structure’ includes three dimensions of basic knowledge, professional knowledge, and comprehensive knowledge, the ‘ability structure’ includes essential ability, professional ability, and innovation capacity, the ‘digital structure’ consists of three dimensions of digital quality, digital knowledge and digital skills, and the ‘quality structure’ includes the dimensions of belief quality and professional spirit. The research can better stimulate the vitality of the great digital artisans and provide theoretical support and practical insights for promoting them to serve the development and enhancement of the digital economy.