Digital Competencies: Are Pre-Service Teachers Qualified for Digital Education?

This study examines digital competency (DigComp) as a crucial component of twenty-first century teachers. It investigates pre-service teachers' level of DigComp from their perspective, and whether they felt their preparation programme qualified them for digital education. One hundred forty student teachers in their final year of majoring in either art education or kindergarten at a public university in Saudi Arabia participated. Data was collected via an online survey that included five DigComp areas: information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem-solving. Significant differences were found between the two groups: the communication and collaboration domain had the highest mean in both groups (152.47+19.39; 139.40+ 17.79); while the safety domain had the lowest mean score in both groups (16.48+2.62; 15.06+3.35). Results showed that 77.1% of pre-service teachers rated their DigComp as excellent and 22.9% rated it as moderate. The results further revealed that the pre-service teacher programme was average (65.04%) in qualifying pre-service teachers to integrate technology into their future teaching practices. The results of this study highlight the necessity to evaluate pre-service teacher programmes for suitability to produce instructors who possess the cognitive, teaching, and digital competencies required in the era of technology.