Content Analysis on the definitions of Competence, Digital Competence, and Digital Teaching Competence

Abstract

There is an evident terminological and conceptual imbroglio about the terms competence, digital competence and digital teaching competence in academic and documentary literature. To collaborate with specific clarifications, this article aims to: i) to identify definitions of competence, digital competence, and teaching digital competence in the field of education present in publications of international academic relevance; ii) to analyze quantitatively the contributions of these themes in a selected corpus of references of the area; iii) to elaborate proper definitions on competence, digital competence, and teaching digital competence under an educational point of view. The methodology applied was Content Analysis in a corpus of thirteen references from searches in the Web of Science and Scopus databases, whose analytical procedures had been assisted by Atlas.ti software. The data had disclosed that in this set of references there are few explicit definitions of these terms and that, when they exist, there are nuances in the understandings; however, it was noticed that, even in different ways of expressing such concepts, there are converging elements in the understanding of the authors, composed of terms such as abilities, usage, and literacy. Finally, considering the selected referential it was possible to elaborate on proper definitions that had emerged from this study and that can be used for reference and discussion by other researchers in the area.