The concept of digital literacy has become increasingly critical within the educational landscape, recognized as an essential skill for citizens navigating the digital age.
This shift has prompted higher education institutions to place a heightened focus on fostering these competencies, not only from a specific professional standpoint but also as a means to enhance both academic achievement and personal growth among students.
Against this backdrop, assessing the digital literacy of aspiring teachers takes on special significance, being deemed crucial for both their foundational training and their effectiveness in their future teaching roles.
The study conducted by María Rosa Fernández-Sánchez and Juan Silva-Quiroz delves into this issue, examining the digital literacy levels of Pedagogy students in Chile through a gender lens, employing the COMPDIG-PED assessment instrument, which is grounded in the European Framework for Digital Competence (DIGCOMP).
The findings from this study illuminate significant gender-based disparities in critical areas of digital literacy, such as online communication and collaboration, digital content creation, and problem-solving, with men scoring higher than women.
This discovery underscores the ongoing presence of a digital gender divide in the early stages of teacher education, presenting considerable challenges for achieving equity in the access and effective use of digital tools within the educational sector.
Furthermore, it highlights the imperative to implement targeted strategies aimed at bridging these gaps, advocating for a training approach that is both more inclusive and equitable, enabling all future educators to fully develop their digital skills.
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How to cite: Fernández-Sánchez, M. R., & Silva Quiroz, J. (2022). Assessment of the Digital Competence of Future Teachers from a Gender Perspective. RIED. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 25(2), 327–346. https://doi.org/10.5944/ried.25.2.32128
