Abstract
Teachers’ integration of information and communication technology (ICT) has been widely studied, given that digital competence is considered to be a crucial outcome of twenty first century education. In this context, research highlighted teachers’ computer self-efficacy (CSE) as one of the most important determinants of their ICT integration into teaching practices. Whereas previous research mainly focused on the relation between CSE and ICT integration from a frequency-based point of view, recent research suggests to investigate this relation using more qualitative measures of ICT integration such as the degree to which teachers emphasize developing students’ digital information and communication skills (TEDDICS). Consequently, the present study investigates the relations between these two constructs: teachers’ emphasis on developing students’ digital skills and their computer self-efficacy, taking into account the moderating roles of age and gender. We used a representative sample of 1071 Norwegian secondary school teachers who participated in the international computer and information literacy study (ICILS) in 2013. Our results provide evidence on the positive relation between CSE and TEDDICS. Furthermore, age positively moderated this relation between some factors of the two constructs, indicating that computer self-efficacy plays an even more important role for teachers of higher age in the context of emphasizing ICT skills in classrooms. The unique effect of gender was present for one correlation between CSE and TEDDICS, indicating that moderation by gender was apparent to a limited extent, and related to use of computers for instructional purposes. The interaction between age and gender did not reveal significant moderation effects. We discuss these results in light of the potential consequences for teacher training.
Highlights
The role and use of information and communication technology (ICT) in education has changed profoundly over the last decade
In order to evaluate the goodness-of-fit of the models, we examined model fit statistics such as the χ2 value, the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), the comparative fit index (CFI), and the Tucker Lewis index (TLI), and applied common guidelines for an acceptable model fit: RMSEA ≤ .08, CFI ≥ .95, and TLI ≥ .95 (Marsh et al 2005)
Since gender effects were not found for all nine TEDDICS-computer self-efficacy (CSE) relations, our findings suggest that male and female teachers may differ in some matters related to ICT to a limited extent
Summary
The role and use of information and communication technology (ICT) in education has changed profoundly over the last decade. Existing research identified positive relations between teachers’ CSE and their use of ICT (e.g., Kreijns et al 2013; Sang et al 2010). It seems, as if the degree to which teachers integrate ICT into their teaching depends on the beliefs in their capabilities of using ICT (i.e., self-efficacy). The ways teachers make these decisions may vary according to the different types of ICT use This view is supported by other researchers that consider the nature of self-efficacy to be specific to situations and domains (e.g., Dicke et al 2014; O’Mara et al 2006). They suggested using specific CSE measures that reflect the targeted performance rather than global assessments (Bong and Skaalvik 2003; Pajares and Schunk 2001)
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