The impact of age and gender on Digital Competence of Secondary Education Teachers

Digital competence in teaching is currently one of the keys to the quality of the education system. Thus, the ability of teachers to use, integrate and understand the impact of technology, as well as the promotion of digital skills by the students they teach, are some of the main concerns of educational policy and scientific literature. Based on these concerns, this article analyses the level of digital competence of teachers of Compulsory Secondary Education in the Valencian Community, as well as the incidence of two variables (gender and age) in its development. To do so, an adaptation of the DigCompEdu Check-In instrument was used, which was answered by 667 teachers at this stage. The results show that teachers perceive themselves to have an intermediate level of competence regardless of these variables, although the analysis of the specific dimensions does reveal that the older the teacher, the lower the perceived level of competence. In relation to gender, there are also no significant differences in general, but there are different scores depending on the dimension analysed. These findings thus make it possible to emphasise the need to promote the technological training of teachers, as well as to identify the aspects on which this training should be focused as a priority.