Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu): Development and Evaluation of a Self-assessment Instrument for Teachers' Digital Competence

Based on the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu), a selfassessment tool was developed to measure teachers’ digital competence. This paper describes the DigCompEdu reference framework, the development and the evaluation of the instrument, and analyses the results of the study with 335 participants in Germany in view of the reliability and validity of the tool. To determine internal consistency, Cronbach's alpha is considered for the entire instrument as well as separately for the six competence areas. To investigate the validity, hypotheses based on groups with known attributes are tested using the Mann-Whitney-U test and the Spearman rank correlation. As predicted, there is a significant, albeit small, difference between STEM and non-STEM teachers, and computer science and noncomputer science teachers. Furthermore, there is also a significant difference between teachers with negative attitudes to the benefits of technologies compared to those with neutral or positive attitudes. Teachers who are experienced in using technologies in class have significantly higher scores, which further confirms the validity of the instrument. In sum, the results of the analysis suggest that the survey is a reliable and valid instrument to measure teachers’ digital competence.