Professional digital competence beliefs of student teachers, pre-service teachers and teachers: Validating an instrument based on the DigCompEdu framework

This study aims to develop and validate an instrument to assess and compare professional digital competence beliefs of student teachers, pre-service teachers and teachers based on the DigCompEdu framework. We used data from N = 1386 German (prospective) teachers (73% female). First, we conducted exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and multi-group analysis to examine the factorial structure across groups. We identified seven dimensions of professional digital competence beliefs among groups. Second, we investigated mean level differences. Our findings show that pre-service teachers tended to have the highest professional digital competence beliefs, followed by teachers. The results provide a reference for the utility of the instrument to evaluate (prospective) teachers' professional digital competence beliefs and alter teacher education and training to investigated needs. We discuss future steps for teacher education.