The role of Spanish research in the international scientific production on teachers’ digital competence (2010-2023): trends, problems, and challenges

Abstract

The aim of this article is to place Spanish research on teacher digital competence within the international context. The research includes an in-depth analysis of 580 publications indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases from the period 2010-2023. The results show an exponential growth over the last two decades in this area, highlighting the undeniable prominence of Spanish research (accounting for 60% of the total publications) and indicating a high concentration of scientific dissemination in a few academic journals. The (self-)perception of teachers or future teachers has been identified as a priority area of study, being addressed almost exclusively through surveys conducted with dispersed populations and very small, non-probabilistic samples. Therefore, it becomes necessary to work with more representative samples and qualitative methodologies that can provide coherence to legislation on teacher digital competence, which has focused on non-university education, while research predominantly takes students and university teachers as its main subjects of study.