Development of a self-efficacy scale for digital competences in schools

Abstract

Abstract-As computer science enters the school curricula in an increasing number of countries, teachers must prepare to integrate digital competences into their teaching. This integration is a moving target where new methods, tools and applications appear and disappear at such rates that teachers must have confidence to independently and continuously explore what is new, what is relevant and how to plan their pedagogic activities to include digital competences. In this context approaches which can be used to study self-efficacy in digital competences among school teachers are desperately needed. With such a tool in place, we can make a baseline study and then follow teachers over time to measure changes in their self-efficacy, the cause of these changes and learn how to build their digital competence selfefficacy in different ways. The same tool can also be used to measure the self-efficacy in other populations, e.g., students in teacher training programs to ensure that they obtain an adequate self-efficacy in digital competences during their studies.This paper describes the development of a self-efficacy scale in digital competences, based on the DigiComp 2.0 framework definition of digital competence. The tool focuses predominantly on digital competences relevant for teachers in school years K-9.

Digital Competence, Teacher Self-Efficacy and Training Needs

“…The competences with the highest overall CSE were those in competence area 1, that is, skills related to information and data literacy. This finding is in line with our pilot study when developing the self-efficacy instrument [13], where we found that the respondents, in general, felt most confident in this area. This can, however, be considered an expected result, as handling data and information is something we all do on a regular basis in our everyday life.…”

“…While relevant, these scales focus primarily on core computing skills, in contrast to the broader set of skills that DigComp identifies. In [13] we developed a scale aimed at evaluating the self-efficacy of practising school teachers in the context of computing and/or digital competence being added to national school curricula in Europe. The approach being taken by European national authorities affects not only teachers in programming and computing, but also in many other school subjects including mathematics, natural sciences, technology and craft.…”

“…This was done by computing discrimination indexes for all items and performing cross correlation between all responses. A more detailed description of the process of developing the instrument can be found in [13].…”

“…In [13] we described the development of a self-efficacy scale for teachers, focusing on digital competence as described in the European Commission's DigComp 2.0 framework. DigComp is highly influential and affects how computing and digital competences are viewed in national school curricula within the European Union (EU).…”

A study of the use of digital technology and its conditions with a view to understanding what ‘adequate digital competence’ may mean in a national policy initiative

“…Researchers concerned with the digitalisation of the K-12 school have contributed insights and understanding of what an increased uptake and use of digital technology in school has meant in terms of possibilities and challenges for school leaders, teachers and students (Olofsson et al 2015;Nordén, Mannila, and Pears 2017;Willermark 2018). In this article, the focus is on a central aspect of the digitalisation of the K-12 schooldigital competenceand specifically teachers' digital competence .…”