Developing a digital competence scale for teachers: validity and reliability study

Abstract

Teachers' digital competence is very significant in terms of integrating digital technologies into the education process. This study aims to develop an up-to-date scale that can determine the digital competencies required for teachers to acquire new skills that arise with the change and development of technology and use them in educational environments. A total of 695 teachers participated in the study. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to examine the construct validity of the scale. To assess the discrimination index of the items, the lower 27% and upper 27% groups were determined, and the differences between the groups were examined. Internal consistency coefficients were calculated for the reliability analysis. According to the results of the analysis, the developed scale consists of six factors and 46 items, and the Cronbach Alpha coefficient of the entire scale is 0.975. The factors were identified as Safety, Data Literacy, Problem Solving, Digital Content Creation, Communication and Collaboration, and Ethics, respectively, according to the content of the items. When compared with the DigComp 2.1 framework developed by the European Union, it was determined that the ethical factor emerged differently in this study. As a result, it can be said that the Digital Competency Scale for Teachers is a valid and reliable scale that can be used to measure teachers' digital competencies.