Teacher Digital Competence: self-perception in education students

Abstract

The digital competence of teachers is a key aspect for education in the current socio digital context. The approach to the knowledge that students have in this area is essential in initial teacher training to guide training programs to its development and updating. The objectives of this research are to analyze the perception that first-year undergraduate students of Education have about their competence mastery, and to detect possible differences according to the variables age, gender, degree, academic year and university entrance route. A quantitative, non-experimental and transectional study with a post-hoc design and descriptive, associative and correlational analysis was carried out with 3029 first-year undergraduate students in Education in Catalonia and Andorra during 3 academic years. The results indicate a high self-perception that, contrasted by means of a discussion group with students in their final year, is considered not to reflect reality. There are no significant differences in the level of self-perception according to gender, degree and university entrance route, but there are significant differences according to age and the academic year in which they begin their studies, probably due to the Covid-19 situation and the adaptation of the environments to online and hybrid formats.