Gender and its impact on Pedagogy students¿ self-perceived digital competence

Abstract

The expectation now exists that future generations of teachers will graduate being competent in the pedagogical use of ICTs, as this would favor students¿ learning. Nevertheless, a variety of studies reveal significant differences in the level of knowledge about these tools owned by men in comparison with women, this being a highly worrying aspect in view of the evident feminization of pedagogy degrees. In this regard, the present paper shows the main results obtained in a study which had as its aim to determine the impact that gender has on each one of the digital competence dimensions. A descriptive design was used for this purpose, where an instrument designed ad hoc for our research was applied to 175 students at a Chilean university.The analyses were performed by means of central tendency statistics and measurement contrast tests, which the software SPSS v.20.The results confirm that future male teachers obtain better results in digital competence levels than their female counterparts, mainly in the dimensions pedagogical aspects, technical aspects and social, ethical and legal aspects.