Teachers’ digital competence: bibliometric analysis of the publications of the web of science scientometric database

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Teachers' digital competence: bibliometric analysis of the publications of the web of science scientometric database

Mehmet Kemal Aydin

PhD, Assist. Prof. Dr.

Hitit University, Distance Education Application and Research Centre, Corum, Turkey

Turgut Yildirim

PhDc, Doctorant Hitit University, Faculty of Sports Sciences, Corum, Turkey

Abstract

With the Online Emergency Remote Teaching (OERT) practices emerged during the outbreak of the pandemic, teachers' digital competence (TDC) has gained growing attention in educational ICT research realm. In view of this context, the present review study aimed at illuminating the current state of TDCs literature by identifying the volume, growth trajectory, geographical distribution of TDC research. It also aimed at mapping highly influential TDC scholars, documents, and journals. Retrieved from the educational research category in the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science (WoS) core collection database, the metadata of 406 articles were analyzed by employing bibliometric performance and science mapping techniques in VOSwiever 1.6. The timeframe for the study was the last two decades (from 2002 to 2021). Findings illustrated that there has been a growing increase in the number of studies focusing on TDCs. This increase is more evident in the Covid-19 pandemic period, particularly in the last two years. More specifically, more than half of all studies were published in the years 2020 and 2021. Findings also illustrated that there is a dominance of Spanish scholars and organizations in TDC research since 2 out of every 3 studies were carried out by researchers affiliated to Spanish Universities. Additionally, co -citation analysis purported the intellectual structure of TDC knowledge base by identifying the most influential authors and documents. Finally, co-occurrence analysis revealed the concept analysis topical foci of TDC research. These topics are concentrated on "teachers' digital competence", "higher education studies", teacher training programs", and "ICT in education". As a result, based on the findings of the study some recommendations were proposed that will contribute into the ICT research community by reflecting the intellectual structure of existing TDC research, thus highlighting the future research direction.

Keywords: digital competence; teachers; TDC; teacher training; science mapping; bibliometric analysis.

ЦИФРОВА КОМПЕТЕНТНІСТЬ УЧИТЕЛІВ: БІБЛЮМЕТРИЧНИИ АНАЛІЗ СТАТЕЙ НАУКОМЕТРИЧНОЇ БАЗИ ДАНИХ WEB OF SCIENCE

Мехмет Кемаль Айдин PhD, доктор, доцент

Університет Хітіт, Центр застосування та дослідження дистанційної освіти, м. Чорум, Туреччина

Тургут Йилдирим PhD, докторант

Університет Хітіт, факультет спортивних наук, м. Чорум, Туреччина

Із впровадженням онлайн дистанційного навчання в екстрених ситуаціях, яке розповсюдилося під час спалаху пандемії, цифрова компетентність учителів (ЦКУ) привернула ще більшу увагу в дослідженнях щодо використання ІКТ в освіті. З огляду на це представлений огляд мав на меті проаналізувати наукові розробки щодо ЦКУ шляхом визначення обсягу, траєкторії зростання, географічного розподілу досліджень. Крім того, дослідники намагалися зазначити впливових учених, документи та журнали, які висвітлюють проблеми пов'язані з ЦКУ. Метадані 406 статей, отримані з категорії освітніх досліджень у базі даних основної колекції Clarivate Analytics Web of Science (WoS), були проаналізовані за допомогою бібліометричних характеристик і методів наукового картографування у VOSwiever 1.6. Часові рамки дослідження - останні два десятиліття (з 2002 по 2021 рр.). Висновки проведеного наукового аналізу показують, що кількість досліджень, присвячених ЦКУ, зростає. Таке зростання є більш очевидним у період пандемії Covid -19, особливо за останні два роки. Більша частина проаналізованих досліджень була опублікована в 2020 та 2021 роках. Відповідно отриманим даним у дослідженнях ЦКУ домінують іспанські вчені та організації, оскільки 2 з кожних 3 досліджень проводились дослідниками, пов'язаними з іспанськими університетами. Крім того, аналіз спільного цитування визначив інтелектуальну структуру бази знань про ЦКУ шляхом виявлення найвпливовіших авторів і документів. Нарешті аналіз збігу надав можливість визначити найбільш актуальні фокуси в дослідженнях з ЦКУ. Ці теми в основному зосереджені на "цифровій компетентності учителів", "дослідженнях вищої освіти", програмах підготовки учителів та "ІКТ в освіті". На основі отриманих результатів було запропоновано деякі рекомендації, які сприятимуть дослідникам у сфері ІКТ в освіті у визначені їх подальших напрямів досліджень.

Ключові слова: цифрова компетентність; учителі; ЦКУ; підготовка учителів; наукове картографування; бібліометричний аналіз.

Introduction

The problem statements. Teachers Digital Competence (hereinafter referred to as TDC) has a pivotal role in the construction of 21^st century society, and thus it is a key competence that teacher training programs should incorporate. In line with this, there is a growing interest in TDC in the last two decades. The concept of digital competence was first documented in the "2006 Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council", and it has been listed as one of the eight key competences that individuals should master to become effective and active citizens in the digital age [2], [3]. Particularly in the field of education, TDCs have become prominent with the publication of "The European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators" (DigCompEdu) in 2017 [4]. The DigCo mpEdu framework has become a reference document for policy makers and researchers in the field of education in European and pro-European countries. In line with this context, "Digital Education at School in Europe Report" well documented that in nearly two -thirds of 43 countries, including Spain,

Norway and Ukraine, TDC is a core competence that teachers should master by the end of teacher training programs [5]. More recently, with the OERT practices implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic, TDCs have become under scrutiny as never before [6], [7]. teachers intellectual program

Analysis of recent studies and publications. There is an established research literature on TDC, and it is growing at a fast and steady pace as mentioned previously. The rapid increase in the volume and diversity of digital competence research is also evident in the previous review studies [1], [8] - [13]. However, rather than presenting a broad picture of TDCs, these studies are mainly focusing on teacher training and higher education area, [1], [8], [10], [12] - [14], and some other specific areas like science teaching and ICT [10], online courses and SPOC (the small private online courses) [9], preschool and nursery [11], and teachers' digital competence [14]. Amongst them, there is only one review study focusing on TDCs conducted by [14], yet it is limited in contextual and geographical coverage since it only covers the publications in six prestigious educational sciences journals in Spain between 1983-2019. Another limitation of the previous review studies is that the number of included papers is very low varying from 56 to 286, except for the study by [9] focusing on online courses and SPOC and including 677 studies. Thus, there is a need for comprehensive review studies on TDC research that will include update studies and cover more studies to present a global perspective on TDC research.

There are three features that distinguish the present study from the previous review studies aiming at mapping TDCs research literature. First, it maps the TDC literature from the birth of the concept of digital competence to its current state, including the recent increase in volume of studies due to the Covid-19 pandemic period. Second, unlike the previous studies, the present study addressed the general teacher competences by including the keywords "digital competence" AND "teachers". Finally, it covers larger number of journal articles than used in past reviews of TDC literature. It also highlights the current state of intellectual structure of TDC knowledge base unlike the previous reviews. Despite the previous review studies addressing TDC research, there is a need for periodical review studies that will contribute in TDC literature in order to develop its theoretical and practical aspects. On the theoretical side, the present review will provide a better understanding of the TDC literature by highlighting the intellectual structure of the TDC literature. On the practical side, it will help researchers to identify research trends in TDC knowledge base and will also shed light policy makers to address TDCs as a core competence in teacher training programs.

The present study aimed at reviewing the publications between 2001-2021 on teachers' digital competence included in the Web of Science by employing bibliometric analysis method. Thus, the following research questions (RQ) were addressed within the scope of the study:

RQ1: What is the volume and distribution of the relevant studies (a) by years (20022021), (b) by authors (authors with at least five articles), (c) by organizations (organizations with at least 10 studies), (d) by countries (top 10 countries that have the highest study count) (e) by journals (top 10 journals with the highest published study count)?

RQ2: What authors and documents have the greatest influence on TDC literature over the past two decades?

RQ3: What are the topical foci of the TDC literature over the past two decades?

The first two (RQ1 and RQ2) provide a broad but clear picture of the state-of-the art of the TDC studies, which will help researchers to better understand the growth volume and trajectory of the TDC literature. Likewise, RQ3 will provide insightful results for researchers and policy makers to identify research trends and gaps, as well as setting future research and policy directions.

Research methods

The present study employed bibliometric analysis as a methodological approach in order to identify research evolution in TDC literature. The rationale for employing bibliometric analysis is that it allows researchers to explore, classify and analyze a large body of scientific output on a specific research topic by making it possible to retrieve entire collection of research from an objective, quantitative perspective, and evaluate the growth of literature and scientific exquisite in a particular research realm [15]. A bibliometric analysis reviews and discloses entire collection of studies in a specific area without any intervention of researcher caused biases [16]. In the basic bibliometric content analysis, researchers adopted descriptive statistics to present the "topographical" developments in knowledge base. Yet in time bibliometric analysis tools have transformed into more powerful tools that enable more comprehensive analysis including structural identification of knowledge base and advanced citation analysis tools based on social network analysis [17], [18]. In line with this the present study employed both descriptive and advanced bibliometric analysis strategies in the present review.

The Procedure

Prior to identifying the studies to be included in the bibliometric analysis, a number of inclusion and exclusion criteria were established. The inclusion criteria of the study were identified as: (1) Studies that have been published between 2001 and 2021 and in journals included in the indexes within the scope of WoS, (2) Studies under Education and Educational research category in WoS, (3) Published articles, (4) Studies published in the journals indexed in the SSCI, ESCI, SCI-E and AHCI indexes. On the other hand, the exclusion criteria were: (1) Studies published before 2000 and in 2022, (2) Studies conducted in some fields other than Education and Educational research, (3) Studies other than articles (books, book chapters, conference papers, dissertations, etc.), (4) Publications in the journals indexed other than SSCI, ESCI, SCI-E and AHCI indexes.

Figure 1. PRISMA flow chart of identification and selection of studies included in the bibliometric analysis

The search was conducted by entering TS= (digital competence AND teachers) in the topic search filed under the document search interface of WoS core collection. The preliminary search resulted in 831 studies. After the application of inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 406 studies were obtained, published between 2001-2021 in the education and educational survey categories and indexed in SSCI, ESCI, SCI-E and AHCI. Bibliometric data of these 406 studies formed the dataset of this study. Figure 1 illustrates the flow chart of the PRISMA statement [19], which depicts the process of the identification and the inclusion of the studies to be included in bibliometric analysis.

Data Extraction and Analysis

Data analysis is two strands. In the first strand, the descriptive bibliometric analysis has been conducted with the MS excel output of the "analyze results" tool in the WoS database. The excel file and analyze results menu in the WoS data base was used to identify the research trends (i.e., distribution of publications by years, authors, countries, and journals) without any intervention of the researchers.

In the second strand, the studies accessed via the WoS database for the bibliometric analysis were downloaded by selecting "full record and cited references" and "tab delimited file" under the "export" menu. The analysis of bibliometric data of the 406 studies was carried out by uploading all the records to the VOSviewer 1.6 software. In order to identify the most influential authors, documents and journals, the author co-citation analysis (ACA), document co-citation analysis (DCA), sources co-citation analysis (SCA) were conducted in VOSviewer 1.6. [20]. Additionally, in order to identify the topical trends in TDC literature co-occurrence of common keywords analysis was employed.

The results and discussion

Performance Analysis

Publication Trends by Year

As the distribution of the relevant publications by year is examined, we identified that there is a sharp increase in the number of publications particularly as of 2017, and this increase has been exponential especially after 2019. As can be seen in Figure 2, the number of the studies focusing on the TDCs was the highest in 2021. A total of 122 publications in 2021 counted for 30% of the total publications. On the other hand, the lowest number of studies were published in 2006 (0.2%) with only one publication. In addition, no publications were identified before 2006 in the descriptive analysis.

The first stream of the growth in the TDC literature can be linked with the publication of the DigCompEdu in 2017 [8]. DigCompEdu is an influential policy document in the realm of teachers' digital competence. On the other hand, there is an exponential increase after 2019 and this can be noted as the second stream of growth. Thus, this increase can be attributed to teachers' widespread use of online, distance and digital education tools within the OERT practices that were put into practice due to the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic. Consequently, the TDCs have been under debate and discussion as never before.

Figure 2. Publications by year