Development and Expert Consensus on a Context-Adapted Digital Competence Indicator System for Teachers in Chinese Private Universities

Abstract

Rapid development in digital technologies has revolutionized higher education and raised teachers’ digital competence to high standards. Despite many efforts from international bodies such as DigCompEdu and TPACK to theorize on teacher digital competence, none of the proposed theoretical models sufficiently reflect the context of Chinese private universities. To fill the research gap and address practical issues, the current study adopted a mixed-methods research strategy using content analysis and expert interviews in constructing a digital competence indicator system for teachers in Chinese private universities. Four dimensions and twelve indicators of digital competence of Chinese private university teachers were developed based on data collected. The results have shown that contextual factors exert a major influence on teacher digital competence, including lack of technological support, practice-oriented requirements in teaching, as well as ethical issues in the emerging context of digitization in higher education. With its focus on digital competence basics and responsibility and ethics in digital environment, the developed framework can be considered a contextualized development of existing universal models of teacher digital competence. It enriches the literature with empirical studies in the field of teacher digital competence and will benefit practices of evaluating, develop teachers’ digital competence and carry out digital transformation projects in Chinese private universities as well as other universities facing similar conditions in developing countries.