Gender and Digital Teaching Competence in Dual Vocational Education and Training

Jesús Sánchez Prieto,Gerardo Gómez García,Melchor Gómez García,Juan Manuel Trujillo Torres

doi:10.3390/educsci10030084

Jesús Sánchez Prieto, Gerardo Gómez García + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci10030084

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Abstract

In recent decades, technological advances have been revolutionizing all areas of society, including the teaching resources and methodologies used in the world of education. Teachers are in the process of adapting to develop the digital skills they need for the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), a process that must be permanent and in which there are still knowledge gaps undermining its application. This study aims to determine whether this lack of digital skills is influenced by the gender of teachers, for example, whether there is a gender gap in ICT application in teaching, specifically Dual Vocational Education and Training, which is a teaching area that has been growing exponentially in recent years. A descriptive quantitative method has been used for this study with a sample of 1568 teachers of Dual Vocational Education and Training from the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, with data collected through a questionnaire. The results show that while the level of knowledge of ICT resources is medium among this group and is therefore improvable, there are no significant gender differences between teachers with respect to the application of e-skills by teaching professionals, despite the existence in other contexts of a large digital gender gap in new technology professionals.

Highlights

Knowledge of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is increasingly essential in all facets of today’s society, whether in the world of work or in everyday life
Before showing the results of the study object of this article, it is interesting to present the main results of the generic study on digital competences (Table 1): Table 1
The main objective of this research work, as reflected, was to determine the existence of a gender gap in the ICT knowledge of Dual Vocational Education and Training teachers, that is to say that what was studied for hypothesis 1

Summary

Introduction

Knowledge of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is increasingly essential in all facets of today’s society, whether in the world of work or in everyday life. Parliament Recommendation on the Key Competences of Lifelong Learning’ was published, one of which is digital competence, which was defined as “the creative, critical and secure use of information and communication (ICT) to achieve the objectives related to work, employability, learning, leisure, inclusion and social participation”. Spanish legislation on education covers these areas in “Organic Law 8/2013, of December 9, for the improvement of educational quality”. It states that ICTs should be used for pedagogical purposes in various areas of the curriculum, in order to promote the inclusion of digital resources and tools that stimulate activities among teachers and students

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