Gender and age gap in the pre-service science teachers' perception of digital competence.

Abstract

Although it has been more than twenty years into the XXI century, digitalisation in education is still challenging for their main actors, schools and teachers, with considerable effort from international and national institutions to achieve the goal of an effective digitalisation of education. Using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in school and high schools with a pedagogical approach should be critical in teacher training since it is one of the best ways to afford the problem. Concerning this, demographic variables like gender and age could affect the way of implementing the ICT in education and the way teachers develop their Teachers' Digital Competence (TDC). To give insight into this question, we have used an adapted Likert-type questionnaire based on the instrument DigComEdu Check-in, asking 20 pre-service science teachers (PSSTs) about their self-perceptions regarding the six areas depicting TDC. We perform a descriptive and qualitative analysis using the software RStudio (version 1.3.1093), presenting the percentual distributions for each gender and age group considered in each one of the areas. The results indicate that female PSSTs have a greater perception of their TDC, leading most areas. Concerning age, only the youngest group achieved pioneer levels, leading in four of the six areas. In light of these results, it could be a gap in favour of women and the youngest pre- service teachers, being necessary to deep into these differences ever since pre-service training in order to promote quality teacher formation on ICT.