Teachers' sense of competence in terms of ICT use: the case of secondary school teachers

Headnote

In the current digital age, the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) into teaching practices has become a determining factor in learning quality. The teachers' digital competence issue has come back to the forefront because of the schools' closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study aims to assess the sense of competence in terms of ICT use of a sample of 260 secondary school teachers in the Directorate of Education in Rhamna, Morocco, by adopting a quantitative methodology. Our findings suggested that only 26.1% of the individuals in our sample reported they feel effectively competent. The pandemic made a significant change in teachers' perceptions of the importance of ICT integration and training in the field. Moreover, a cross-analysis highlighted significant relationships between the sense of competence in terms of ICT use and six independent variables: continuous training, learning readiness, gender, age, teaching experience, and school subject. Our findings would be helpful for policymakers to guide educational policies by focusing on ICT continuous training to enhance teachers' digital competence.

Keywords: ICT; educational technology; pedagogical uses; Lemke and Coughlin framework

Introduction

Information and communication technologies (ICT) are increasingly used in all areas of human activity and are having a growing influence on the world of education. Thus, schools cannot afford to remain disengaged. Technology has invaded teachers' daily lives (Şahal and Ozdemir 2020), but it has not yet yielded the desired impact on their practice in the classroom. Therefore, training on digital competence represents one of the main challenges teachers face as they strive to integrate ICT into their teaching practices (Garzón-Artacho et al. 2021). Hence, teachers are required to have the digital attitudes and skills that enable them to design active and innovative teaching strategies. A well-trained teacher is more likely to integrate ICT in a relevant way (Hsu 2010). The Covid-19 lockdown has revealed the vulnerability of many educational systems around the world (Lawrence and Fakuade 2021). Schools' reactions ranged from conservative to completely innovative (Stracke et al. 2022).

The concept of digital competence has been used extensively in the literature related to ICT use to assess the extent to which teachers are able to integrate ICT into their teaching practice. This competence is described in the literature by several designations, such...