Digital competence of teachers in the use of ICT for research work: development of an instrument from a PLS-SEM approach

Abstract

All spheres of our life are being affected using technology, particularly its integration in the research processes carried out by teachers. The success of the integration of specific digital resources in research work can be affected by several factors, such as: digital skills for finding information, managing it, analyzing it, and communicating results; digital flow; anxiety in the use of ICT; digital ethics; quality of digital resources; and finally, the behavioral intention to integrate ICT. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that influence the integration of ICT in the research process of the Higher Education teacher, and the relation between them. An online survey was used to collect data, and 1740 participants. This study used a causal model through partial least squares structural equations modeling (PLS-SEM). With this, the hypotheses established between the integration of ICT and its possible incident factors were verified. The findings revealed a significant influence path from factor integration to digital skills, ethics, flow digital, and behavior intention. Although, resource quality and ICT anxiety had significant effects on the causal model, they did not have a large impact on teachers’ integration of digital resources. The total of these factors corresponded to 48.20% of the variance in the integration of the researcher of the specific digital resources to be used in the research process. These results confirm that this model is effective in explaining the technological integration of teachers to use ICT in research work.