Does teacher's data literacy and digital teaching competence influence empowering students in the classroom? Evidence from China.

With the digital transformation of education, data and digital technologies are regarded as the driving forces for teaching innovation. Teachers' data literacy and digital teaching competence are becoming increasingly important for empowering students' digital capacity, ethically technology usage, and collaboration or communication skills in the classroom. Therefore, whether teachers' data literacy and digital teaching competence can empower students in the classroom needs to be explored. This study aims to reveal the relationship between teacher's information communication technology (ICT) attitude, ICT skills, data literacy, digital teaching competence and empowering students. The data were collected from an online self-assessment scale which included a total of 629 K-9 teachers who participated in this study. Using SPSS and AMOS, a model was built by using Structural Equation Models to explain and predict the relationships. The results indicated that: (a) ICT attitude had no significant impact on digital teaching competence, and ICT skills significantly predicted digital teaching competence, but neither ICT attitude nor skills had a significant direct impact on empowering students; (b) data literacy significantly predicted digital teaching competence and had a significant direct impact on empowering students; (c) digital teaching competence, as dominant mediator in ICT attitude, ICT skills and data literacy, strongly predicted empowering students. The findings provided valuable evidence for teachers, policymakers, administrators, teacher educators, and teachers to better reimagine the teachers' digital teaching competence. In the future, the teachers' digital teaching competence should become the top priority in teacher ICT training, which was the most direct influencing factor for empowering students.

Introduction

Under COVID-19 pandemic, the digital transformation of education is accelerated and became the most important challenge and global trend (UNESCO IITE, 2022). As society going digital, digital technologies and data had the potential to transforming education to cultivate student’s new skills required by the changing and uncertain world (OECD, 2019). Facing the challenges of digital transformation, teachers need to integrate digital technologies and data into their practice in the classroom. Digital teaching competence implies the acquisition of a set of skills, knowledge and attitude that the teacher must possess for the technical, pedagogical and didactic incorporation of information and communication technologies (ICT) in educational contexts (Cabero-Almenara et al., 2021a). However, what factors will affect teacher’s digital competence remains a topic of debate (Engen, 2019; Scherer et al., 2017). Under the digital transformation of education, teachers’ digital competence building is highly concerned by policy makers, international organizations and researchers, which has proposed some conceptual framework, such as the ICT competence framework for teachers (UNESCO IITE, 2018), the European Digital Competence Framework (DigCompEdu) (Redecker, 2017), ISTE standards for educators (ISTE, 2017), Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Framework (TPACK) (Koehler & Mishra, 2009) and etc. Current research mainly focused on developing frameworks for teachers and assessing teachers’ digital competence (Lucas et al., 2021; Lachner et al., 2019).

Existing studies indicated that data use could improve teachers’ teaching practices (Miller-Bains et al., 2022; Mandinach & Jackson, 2012) and lead to promote students learning and achievements (Schildkamp, 2019; Lai & McNaughton, 2016; Marsh, 2012). More and more educators are expected to use data to support their teaching (Miller-Bains et al., 2022). The competence, to transform information into actionable instructional knowledge and practices by collecting, analyzing, and interpreting all types of data (assessment, school climate, behavioral, snapshot, longitudinal, moment-to-moment, and so on), was called data literacy for teaching (Gummer & Mandinach, 2015). Therefore, data literacy was an essential skill for educators when making decisions about student progress (Trantham et al., 2021; Mandinach & Gummer, 2016a). However, there were only few research on data literacy for teaching that mainly focused on the following two main categories, the first of which were studies dedicated to assessing teachers’ data literacy by developing scales (Trantham et al., 2021; Shreiner & Dykes, 2021), and other studies explored the teaching effects on student learning achievement by using data in teaching (Van Geel et al., 2016).

The digital transformation of education has put forward higher requirements and expectations for teachers. Not only should teachers use digital technologies in teaching practice, but they should also empower students to use technology for learning and improve their learning capacity (Lucas et al., 2021). However, few research could be found on exploring the influencing factors for teachers’ empowering students’ digital competence, ethically use technology, collaboration or communication skills in classroom. In addition, fewer studies examined the relationship among teachers’ digital teaching competence, data literacy, and empowering students. Therefore, this study aimed at developing a scale to discuss the relationship among teachers’ ICT attitude, ICT skills, data literacy, digital teaching competence and empowering students. Another purpose of our study was to understand the underlying mechanism of how digital competence as the mediators impacted teacher to empower students. The findings have the potential to reveal the in-service teachers’ status quo of ICT attitude, ICT skills, data literacy, digital teaching competence and empowering students.

Literature and hypotheses

ICT attitude

Teachers’ digital competence are generally regarded as intertwining with their attitude towards technology (Spiteri & Rundgren, 2020). Teachers’ attitude about ICT will influence an individual’s behaviour and play an important role in their learning, so ICT attitude is considered important (Funkhouser & Mouza, 2013; Sang et al., 2012; Prestridge, 2012; Van Dinther et al., 2011; Van Braak et al., 2004). ICT attitude is defined as general feelings of support or opposition to the use of ICT (Yuen & Ma, 2008). Based on previous research, teachers had a generally positive attitude towards the use of digital technologies in teaching who were confident in their ICT skills (Fraillon et al., 2020) and more likely to apply ICT to their teaching (Admiraal et al., 2017). However, teachers who have a negative attitude towards the use of ICT in the classroom are simply unlikely to use ICT (Mahat et al., 2012). In addition, some studies found that teachers’ ICT attitude may affect their ICT skills (Wang & Zhao, 2021), change teachers’ teaching methods (Wu et al., 2019), and influence the competence to effectively use ICT in teaching (Hernández-Ramos et al., 2014; Wen & Shih, 2008). Therefore, ICT attitude is a determinant of the integration of digital technologies and their effective and innovative use in the teaching process (Eickelmann & Vennemann, 2017), which further promotes teachers’ digital teaching competence. For example, Hernández-Ramos et al. (2014) highlighted the role of teachers’ ICT attitude in the use of ICTs and found that teachers’ digital teaching competence were relatively strong with positive ICT attitude. However, Hämäläinen et al. (2019) found that despite this positive attitude among teachers, there were still significant differences in teachers’ digital competence. Wang & Zhao (2021) and Ndibalema (2014) also confirmed this conclusion. Since literature studies show that the impact of ICT attitude on digital teaching competence is inconsistent, it is necessary to explore the relationship between ICT attitude and digital teaching competence.

ICT skills

The potential of digital technologies in learning and teaching needs to be unleashed, everyone needs to develop digital skills, and basic digital skills should be part of the core transferable skills that any citizen should be able to develop (European Union, 2020). Research on the digital skills of teachers always paid attention to ICT skills, which refered to the use of ICT (Fernández-Batanero et al., 2020; Tondeur et al., 2018; Van Laar et al., 2017). In this study, ICT skills include the use of hardware devices (e.g., computers, projectors or visualizers) and software application (e.g., social media, web platforms or discipline-specific teaching tools). Previous research found that the utilization of hardware devices, such as projectors (Aslan & Zhu, 2017) and interactive whiteboards (Aldhafiri, 2020), and applications, such as social media (Robles Moral & Fernández Díaz, 2021), MOOCs (Castaño-Muñoz et al., 2018) and virtual environments (Yeung et al., 2012), would change the traditional teaching methods of teachers, which would have an impact on teachers’ digital teaching competence, thereby improving student learning. Thus, ICT skills could be seen as a requisite for taking advantage of technology-enhanced teaching practices (Hämäläinen et al., 2021; Knezek & Christensen, 2016). For example, Hatlevik (2017) found that assessing teachers’ self-efficacy in basic ICT skills could predict changes in teachers’ digital competence. In addition, we also concern about whether the improvement of ICT skills will improve teachers’ data literacy.

Data literacy

With the increasing development of educational analytics technology (Ndukwe & Daniel, 2020) and the digitization of education (Perrotta & Williamson, 2018), educational data literacy seems to have spread among many educators in the K-12 education field (Raffaghelli & Stewart, 2020). Regarding the debate over digital competence, the EU COM incorporated data literacy into its DigComp framework (Carretero et al., 2017). However, the framework mainly focused on the search, retrieval, and interpretation of data, but less on creative analysis and use of data (Raffaghelli & Stewart, 2020). Moreover, scholars from all over the world committed to building a series of frameworks to assess teachers’ educational data literacy (Papamitsiou et al., 2021; Kennedy-Clark et al., 2021; Kippers et al., 2018; Mandinach & Gummer, 2016b). Most dimensions of teachers’ data literacy in frameworks included the following three dimensions: data collection, data analysis, data evaluation, and data application. In addition, more and more researchers tried to explore how to use data to support teachers’ teaching decisions to personalize the teaching process (Fuchs et al., 2021; Powell et al., 2021).

Existing studies showed that data use in classroom had a positive impact on student learning (Marsh, 2012). However, there was less research on whether teachers’ data literacy improved students’ digital competence. Abrams et al. (2021) argued that this disconnect between data use practices and student learning improvement was partly attributable to limit teacher preparation and professional development. Some studies showed that teachers’ use of data in the classroom benefited teachers to improve their classroom teaching (Coburn & Turner, 2011). More studies, under the context of digital competence, only assessed the level of data literacy (Reisoğlu & Çebi, 2020; Zhao et al., 2021). Past studies showed that teachers generally lacked adequate data literacy (Sun et al., 2016). In recent years, educators’ data literacy had improved significantly (Kippers et al., 2018). However, little research investigated the relationship between data literacy and digital teaching competence, which is necessary to discuss. In short, teachers’ data literacy may be an important factor affecting teachers’ digital teaching competence and empowering students.

Digital teaching competence

As ICT tools became a core part of teachers’ daily work, teachers must rethink and change their previous education methods through technology (Zhao et al., 2021). The use of technology did not indicate high-quality teaching, but rather depended on how teachers integrated technology into their teaching (González et al., 2020). Teachers’ digital teaching competence were key factors in enhancing their professional development and improving students’ learning processes (Fernández-Batanero et al., 2020). Research also showed that teachers’ digital teaching competence was key to integrating digital technologies into educational practice (Lázaro-Cantabrana et al., 2019), which would affect students. In today’s classroom, teachers often needed to use digital technology to carry out teaching activities. However, in the process of teaching, teachers with poor digital teaching competence might not be able to take full advantage of ICT to promote students’ knowledge (Guillén-Gámez et al., 2019). Disappointing students’ learning outcomes were often associated with teachers’ lack of ICT integration (Wu et al., 2019; Eteokleous, 2008). Previous studies showed that empowering students’ digital competence could be enhanced by improving teachers’ digital teaching competence, such as reusing instructional media and digital resources (Robles Moral & Fernández Díaz, 2021), developing teaching models with digital technologies (del Arco et al., 2021), and providing personalized learning support (Zhang et al., 2021). Therefore, this study argues that digital teaching competence may play an important role in empowering students.

Empowering students

Students’ digital competence increasingly became a common concern of international education researchers (He et al., 2021; Mehrvarz et al., 2021). What’s more, communication and collaboration skills were essential for survival in the twenty-first century (Silber-Varod et al., 2019), and students as a digital citizen, the responsible and ethical use of technology was increasingly valued (ISTE, 2016). How to promote these capacities in the classroom was the key for students to become responsible and capable people in the twenty-first century. In this study, empowering students refers to promoting students’ digital capacity, ethics of technology utilization, students’ collaboration and communication skills in classroom. Teachers should be able to access, create and use digital resources and media for teaching, moreover they should be able to utilize appropriate technologies to promote the development of students’ digital competence (Alarcón et al., 2020). In recent years, the improvement of students’ digital competence was considered as a positive impact on student engagement and academic burnout (Wang et al., 2021; Heidari et al., 2021). However, some studies found that teachers were generally less competence of empowering students’ digital competence (Istenic Starcic et al., 2018), ethically technology usage (Ribble & Miller, 2013), collaboration and communication (Llorent-Vaquero et al., 2020). For example, Hatlevik and Hatlevik (2018) found that only about half of teachers valued developing students’ digital competence from the survey of 1158 teachers. Therefore, improving students’ digital competence, ethically technology usage, collaboration and communication in classroom should become the key concern of teachers, that is, to empower students.

Existing research showed that teachers’ ICT attitude and skills had an impact on students’ digital competence (Eickelmann & Schulz-Zander, 2008). Lorenz et al. (2019) found that teacher attitude, Frequency of ICT use, ICT equipment, and ICT-related collaboration all had an impact on students’ digital competence. Hatlevik and Hatlevik (2018) found that facilitating the use of ICT in teaching by teachers could indirectly facilitate teachers to improve students’ digital competence. Kaarakainen et al. (2018) advocated ensuring that every student in Finnish schools had the best opportunity to learn digital skills by improving teachers’ ICT skills. As professionals who dedicated to teaching, in addition to use digital technologies, teachers also needed to improve students’ learning through well-founded pedagogy to improve their digital competence (Krumsvik, 2014; Redecker, 2017). Rubach and Lazarides (2021) mentioned that teachers, who believed themselves could use digital tools to communicate effectively with students and use such tools to solve complex problems, were more likely to be close to students and use digital technology to support students’ learning effectively and directly.

The research hypothesis

Based on a literature review, this study aimed to explore the mediating role of digital teaching competence and their relationship with ICT attitude, ICT skills, data literacy, digital teaching competence, and empowering students. The following hypotheses and hypothesis research models were proposed (as shown in Fig. 1):

Fig. 1

Research model

Hypothesis 1: teachers’ ICT attitude positively predicted digital teaching competence.

Hypothesis 2: teachers’ ICT skills positively predicted digital teaching competence.

Hypothesis 3: teachers’ data literacy positively predicted digital teaching competence.

Hypothesis 4: teachers’ digital teaching competence positively predicted empowering students.

Hypothesis 5: teachers’ ICT attitude positively predicted empowering students.

Hypothesis 6: teachers’ ICT skills positively predicted empowering students.

Hypothesis 7: teachers’ data literacy positively predicted empowering students.

Hypothesis 8: teachers’ ICT attitude positively predicted ICT skills.

Hypothesis 9: teachers’ ICT skills positively predicted data literacy.

Method

Participants

Participants in this study were teachers from 19 schools working in kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools (K-9) in Binjiang District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. These teachers were teaching in different subjects, but these teachers had all participated in training on the Implementation of the Information Technology Application Competence Improvement Project 2.0, which was a policy on large-scale training for improving teachers digital teaching competence in China. Data was collected through the online questionnaire platform Wenjuanxing (https://www.wjx.cn/), from 5 to 8 November 2021. The completion of the online questionnaire was voluntary and anonymous. A total of 629 valid questionnaires were compiled. Detailed demographic information about the participants was listed in Table 1.

Table 1

Participants’ demographic information

Characteristics	Categories	Frequency	Percentage (%)
Gender	Female	575	91.4
	Male	54	8.6
Years of teaching experience	1 - 5 years	213	33.9
	6 – 15 years	237	37.7
	16 - 25 years	129	20.5
	26 – 35 years	50	7.9
School level	Kindergarten	440	70.0
	Primary school	66	10.5
	Secondary school	123	19.6
Educational background	Vocational college	39	6.2
	Undergraduate	513	81.6
	Graduate	77	12.2

Instrument development

The instrument used in this study consist of two parts. The first section contained demographic information of the participants, including gender, years of teaching experience, school level and educational background. The second section consisted of five subscales, including ICT attitude, ICT skills, data literacy, digital teaching competence and empowering students. These subscales encompassed validated and widely adopted measurements, containing 20 items: ICT attitude (3 items), ICT skills (4 items), data literacy (4 items), digital teaching competence (5 items) and empowering students (4 items). All items were designed with a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 to 5 on a scale of strongly disagree to agree strongly. Table 2 showed the scale and references.

Table 2

Survey instrument

Item	Description	References
IA1	I recognize the importance of the application of information technology (IT) in modern education.	Guillén-Gámez & Mayorga-Fernández (2020), Cabero-Almenara et al. (2021b)
IA2	I actively pay attention to the application and development of IT in education.
IA3	I am willing to share with colleagues the experience and new discoveries about the application of IT.
IS1	I solve common problems in multimedia teaching equipment applications.	Zhao et al. (2021), Sánchez-Cruzado et al. (2021)
IS2	I expertly use the information-based teaching equipment in the classroom (e.g., computers, projectors, visualizers).
IS3	I expertly use at least one discipline-specific teaching tools (e.g., geometer’s sketchpad, online maps, realistic experiments).
IS4	I expertly use at least one social media and web platform to support students learning (e.g., e-mail, WeChat, MOOCs).
DL1	I efficiently retrieve and access raw data from the teaching process (e.g., access to data, databases).	Papamitsiou et al. (2021), Carey et al. (2018)
DL2	I reasonably use statistical analysis software to process and analyze the obtained data (e.g., SPSS, Excel).
DL3	I judge the source, the collection method, and the quality of data to ensure accuracy.
DL4	I analyze data to support teaching decisions and improve teaching strategies.
DTC1	I select digital medias and resources based on different teaching sessions.	Papamitsiou et al. (2021), Carey et al. (2018)
DTC2	I use digital media based on different teaching sessions to enhance my teaching practice.
DTC3	I provide targeted study recommendations based on the student level.
DTC4	I choose the appropriate information-based teaching mode (e.g., project-based learning, resource-based learning, blended learning).
DTC5	I provide effective digital technologies to support communication, collaboration, and exploration for students (e.g., learning guidance, learning process).
ES1	I foster students’ understanding of legal and ethical implications in information social in the classroom.	Redecker (2017), Alarcón et al. (2020)
ES2	I provide the learning chance for students in using digital technologies to facilitating students’ digital capacity.
ES3	I provide the collaborative chance for students in using digital technologies.
ES4	I encourage students to communicate in using digital technologies based on their learning needs (e.g., using online meetings, discussion forums).

IA, ICT attitude; IS, ICT skills; DL Data literacy, DTC Digital teaching competence, ES Empowering students

Data analysis

The data were analyzed using SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 24.0. First, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to assess the validity of latent variables, and Cronbach’s alpha (α) was calculated to determine the internal consistency of all subscales in the instrument. Second, this study presented the descriptive statistics and correlations among the variables. Third, structural equation modeling (SEM) was performed to explore the relationship to test the hypotheses and calculate the mediator effect among the five latent variables, including ICT attitude, ICT skills, data literacy, digital teaching competence, empowering students.

Results

Instrument validation`

During the CFA, according to Lomax & Schumacker (2004), the factor loads for 20 items ranged from 0.712 to 0.950. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of subscale, including ICT attitude, ICT skills, data literacy, digital teaching competence and empowering students, were 0.864, 0.843, 0.929, 0.969 and 0.944, which indicated good internal consistency. The factor loads for each item, Cronbach’s alpha and the detail for each subscale were shown in Table 3.

Table 3

Results of CFA

Latent variable	Item	Mean	SD	Factor Loadings	α
IA	IA1	4.71	0.574	0.713	0.864
	IA2	4.43	0.814	0.900
	IA3	4.53	0.749	0.880
IS	IS1	3.69	0.902	0.816	0.843
	IS2	3.93	0.839	0.819
	IS3	3.43	1.053	0.711
	IS4	4.11	0.931	0.720
DL	DL1	3.85	0.899	0.778	0.929
	DL2	3.63	0.936	0.866
	DL3	3.59	0.963	0.936
	DL4	3.70	0.923	0.925
DTC	DTC1	3.98	0.819	0.925	0.969
	DTC2	3.95	0.829	0.920
	DTC3	3.97	0.814	0.929
	DTC4	3.87	0.880	0.941
	DTC5	3.89	0.848	0.924
ES	ES1	3.90	0.951	0.834	0.944
	ES2	3.77	0.987	0.913
	ES3	3.79	0.966	0.945
	ES4	3.70	1.015	0.898

IA, ICT attitude; IS, ICT skills; DL Data literacy, DTC Digital teaching competence, ES Empowering students. N = 629

Descriptive statistics and correlations among the variables

The averages of ICT attitude, ICT skills, data literacy, digital teaching competence and empowering students were 4.556, 3.789, 3.691, 3.932, and 3.790 (Table 4). The high level of teachers’ ICT attitude indicated that teachers had a positive attitude and belief in the integration of information technology into teaching. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient between these variables ranged from 0.367 to 0.750, indicating a significant correlation among all variables.

Table 4

Correlation coefficient

Latent variable	M	SD	Correlation coefficient
			IA	IS	DL	DTC
IA	4.556	0.638
IS	3.789	0.770	0.467**
DL	3.691	0.845	0.435**	0.677**
DTC	3.932	0.790	0.402**	0.675**	0.732**
ES	3.790	0.907	0.367**	0.586**	0.679**	0.750**

IA, ICT attitude; IS, ICT skills; DL Data literacy, DTC Digital teaching competence, ES Empowering students. N = 629; **p < 0.01

We calculated descriptive statistics, including gender, years of teaching experience, school level, and educational background in five variables (Table 5). Then, the level of significant differences was also presented. The data showed that no significant differences were found between sex and educational background across five variables (p > 0.05). However, both the years of teaching experience and the school level found significant differences in five dimensions (p < 0.05). The data showed that no significant differences were found between gender and educational background across five variables (p > 0.05). However, both the years of teaching experience and the school level were found significant differences in five variables (p < 0.05).

Table 5

Descriptive statistics of IA, IS, DL, DTC and ES

	Categories	N	AT	TE	DL	TC	ES
Gender	Female	575	4.555 (0.645)	3.903 (0.850)	3.713 (0.796)	3.945 (0.788)	3.792 (0.908)
	Male	54	4.562 (0.564)	3.778 (0.762)	3.689 (0.850)	3.793 (0.805)	3.769 (0.901)
	Sig.		0.612	0.141	0.433	0.352	0.562
Years of teaching experience	1 - 5 years	213	4.4523 (0.709)	3.9390 (0.680)	3.9249 (0.756)	4.0178 (0.711)	3.9296 (0.780)
	6 – 15 years	237	4.6695 (0.553)	3.8608 (0.789)	3.7236 (0.860)	4.0262 (0.827)	3.8228 (0.966)
	16 - 25 years	129	4.5323 (0.610)	3.5426 (0.808)	3.3857 (0.881)	3.7209 (0.822)	3.5562 (0.975)
	26 – 35 years	50	4.5200 (0.697)	3.4400 (0.701)	3.3300 (0.682)	3.6640 (0.703)	3.6400 (0.821)
	Sig.		0.004**	0.000***	0.000***	0.000***	0.001**
School level	Kindergarten	440	4.627 (0.592)	3.840 (0.713)	3.743 (0.802)	3.991 (0.756)	3.821 (0.905)
	Primary school	66	4.556 (0.559)	3.985 (0.757)	3.879 (0.807)	4.088 (0.700)	3.985 (0.810)
	Secondary school	123	4.304 (0.767)	3.498 (0.895)	3.407 (0.949)	3.636 (0.883)	3.575 (0.932)
	Sig.		0.000***	0.000***	0.000***	0.000***	0.005**
Educational background	Vocational	39	4.581 (0.523)	3.821 (0.588)	3.660 (0.648)	3.923 (0.756)	3.827 (0.839)
	Undergraduate	513	4.568 (0.635)	3.784 (0.797)	3.665 (0.872)	3.937 (0.801)	3.788 (0.932)
	Graduate	77	4.463 (0.709)	3.805 (0.670)	3.883 (0.723)	3.904 (0.737)	3.783 (0.773)
	Sig.		0.394	0.94	0.104	0.941	0.965

IA, ICT attitude; IS, ICT skills; DL Data literacy, DTC Digital teaching competence, ES Empowering students. N = 629; ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05

Assessment of the model fit

The fitness of the measurement and study models was assessed (Table 6) and the results showed that the fitness of both models was acceptable compared to the criteria proposed by Hu and Bentler (1999).

Table 6

The goodness of fit indices for the measurement model and research model

Model	χ2	CMIN/df	TLI	CFI	RMR	RMSEA
Measurement model	633.394 (0.000)	3.959	0.956	0.963	0.0343	0.069
Research model	640.850 (0.000)	3.980	0.956	0.962	0.0357	0.069
Recommended criteria	p > 0.05	< 5.0	> 0.90	> 0.90	< 0.05	< 0.08

Hypotheses testing

Significant correlations among ICT attitude, ICT skills, data literacy, digital teaching competence, and empowering students indicated that these variables were highly correlated. To find the structural relationship between all variables, SEM was adopted to test the significance of each path. The non-normalized coefficient (B), normalized coefficient (ß), standard error (SE), t-value, and R2 (explanatory power of the independent variables) were analyzed to test the hypothesis. The results showed that seven of the nine hypotheses were supported (Table 7 and Fig. 2). It was found that ICT skills (β = 0.39, p = 0.000) and data literacy (β = 0.47, p = 0.000) had a significant positive impact on digital teaching competence, supporting hypothesis 2 and hypothesis 3. Digital teaching competence (β = 0.56, p = 0.000) and data literacy (β = 0.26, p = 0.000) were found to have significant positive effects on empowering students, supporting hypothesis 4 and hypothesis 7. ICT attitude had significant positive effects on ICT skills (β = 0.57, p = 0.000), supporting hypothesis 8. ICT skills had significant positive effects on data literacy (β = 0.74, p = 0.000), supporting hypothesis 9. However, there were no significant direct impact of ICT attitude on digital teaching competence (β = 0.00, p = 0.915) and empowering students (β = 0.02, p = 0.508), rejecting hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 5. In addition, it was not found that ICT skills had a significant direct impact on empowering students (β = 0.04, p = 0.482), rejecting hypothesis 6.

Table 7

The results of the direct effects hypotheses

Hypotheses	Hypothesized path	B	β	SE	Critical ratio	Result
Hypothesis 1	IA → DTC	−0.01	0.00	0.066	−0.106	Rejected
Hypothesis 2	IS → DTC	0.44	0.39	0.061	7.133***	Supported
Hypothesis 3	DL → DTC	0.40	0.47	0.040	9.933***	Supported
Hypothesis 4	DTC → ES	0.59	0.56	0.051	11.441***	Supported
Hypothesis 5	IA → ES	0.04	0.02	0.066	0.663	Rejected
Hypothesis 6	IS → ES	0.04	0.04	0.063	0.703	Rejected
Hypothesis 7	DL → ES	0.22	0.26	0.043	5.288***	Supported
Hypothesis 8	IA → IS	0.94	0.57	0.079	11.889***	Supported
Hypothesis 9	IS → DL	0.98	0.74	0.054	18.303***	Supported

IA, ICT attitude; IS, ICT skills; DL Data literacy, DTC Digital teaching competence, ES Empowering students. N = 629; ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05

Fig. 2

Research model with its standardized coefficients. Dashed lines indicated no significant effects

Indirect and total effects among the variables

After removing insignificant pathways, indirect effect and 95% confidence intervals among teachers’ ICT attitude, ICT skills, data literacy, digital teaching competence and empowering students were recalculated (Table 8). The results showed that the indirect effect of ICT attitude on empowering students was weighted at 0.699, which was co-mediated by ICT skills, data literacy and Digital teaching competence. The indirect effect of ICT skills on empowering students was weighted at 0.742, mediated by digital teaching competence. In addition, the direct effect of data literacy on empowering students was 0.26, and the indirect effect was 0.239, which was also mediated by digital teaching competence.

Table 8

The results of the indirect effects hypotheses

Dependent variable	Independentvariable	Indirect effect	95% confidence interval		R2
			Lower	Upper
DL	IA	0.927***	0.338	0.497	0.558
DTC	IA	0.775***	0.337	0.492	0.641
	IS	0.388***	0.273	0.429
ES	IA	0.699***	0.290	0.432	0.666
	IS	0.742***	0.582	0.697
	DL	0.239***	0.201	0.359

IA, ICT attitude; IS, ICT skills; DL Data literacy, DTC Digital teaching competence, ES Empowering students. N = 629; ***p < 0.001

Discussion

Effects of teachers’ ICT attitude and ICT skill on digital teaching competence and empowering students

While this study found that teachers had a high level of ICT attitude, we didn’t find that teachers’ ICT attitude had a significant impact on digital teaching competence (hypothesis 1). This was consistent with previous research (Wang & Zhao, 2021; Ndibalema, 2014). Hämäläinen et al. (2019) showed that a positive attitude towards ICT cannot necessarily led to effective technology integration. In addition, this study did not find that teachers’ ICT attitude had a significant impact on empowering students (hypothesis 5). As a new generation of teachers become more adaptable to and benefit more from technology, it might be easier than ever to recognize the usefulness of ICT in education (Wang & Zhao, 2021). Based on the above two rejected hypotheses, we can explain that teachers still had a long way to translate ICT attitude into digital teaching competencies. Teachers needed to invest more time and effort in integrating technology into teaching. However, the burden of teachers was heavy, teachers were tired of all kinds of work, and they did not have enough time to integrate technology and teaching. Therefore, the teachers’ burden needed to be released and teachers needed to be given enough time and opportunities to improve their digital teaching competence. In addition, there is also a need to strengthen teachers’ awareness of empowering students. Teachers should advocate that technology as part of the teaching process will help increase students’ digital capacity and collaborative learning (Alfalah, 2018).

The hypothesis 2 was supported that teachers’ ICT skills significantly positively impacted with digital teaching competence. As noted in previous studies, ICT skills were considered to play an important role in predicting teachers’ digital teaching competence (Hämäläinen et al., 2021). However, this study did not find that ICT skills had a significant direct impact on empowering students (hypothesis 6). This finding means that the high ICT skills, such as using hardware and software, can improve teachers’ digital teaching competence, but it can’t equal to empower student.

Although studies showed that hypotheses 1, 5, and 6 were rejected, it didn’t mean that the role of ICT attitude and ICT skills in the digital teaching competence could be ignored. Because the study found that teachers’ ICT attitude had a significant impact on ICT skills (hypothesis 8) and ICT skills had a significant impact on data literacy (hypothesis 9). Meanwhile, teachers’ ICT attitude had an indirect impact on digital teaching competence, mediated by ICT skills and data literacy, ultimately influencing and empowering students. Similar to Hatlevik and Hatlevik (2018), the use of ICT in teaching by teachers could indirectly facilitate teachers to improve students’ digital competence. Therefore, the fact that digital teaching competence was a combination with ICT attitude, ICT skills and data literacy, rather than ICT attitude, ICT skills or data literacy alone, which revealed the improvement of digital teaching competence was a complex process.

Effects of teachers’ data literacy on digital teaching competency and empowering students

The results demonstrated the strong positive impact of teachers’ data literacy on the development of digital teaching competencies (hypothesis 3), which was overlooked in previous studies. Existing studies found that data use can improve teachers’ teaching practices (Miller-Bains et al., 2022; Mandinach & Jackson, 2012), but there was less research on whether data literacy can improve teachers’ digital teaching competence. The overall digital transformation of education became an inevitable trend, and international organizations and countries emphasized the importance of data (UNESCO, 2022; UNICEF, 2021; World Bank, 2020; Scottish Government, 2021). Data-driven teaching would impact long-term pedagogical change (Boesdorfer et al., 2022). However, we found that teachers’ data literacy was the worst in these five factors. This study examined the data literacy from four perspectives: data collection, data analysis, data evaluation and data application. Teachers currently was good at collect data and apply data. Teachers can effectively and smoothly obtain students’ data in the teaching process and use the data. However, teachers’ competence for data analysis and data evaluation was relatively weak. It can be seen that the teachers only use data as a daily practice to judge students subjectively by their years of teaching experience, while ignoring the major difficulty of using it to make more accurate decisions to improve teaching (Mandinach & Gummer, 2013; Means et al., 2010). Teachers needed to shift from experience to accurate decision in their teaching practice, using data analysis tools to enhance teaching effectiveness.

This study also found that teachers’ data literacy had a direct impact weight of 0.26 on empowering students (hypothesis 7). Data literacy also had an indirect impact on empowering students, mediated by digital teaching competence. Previous studies ignored the relationship between data literacy, digital teaching competence and empowering students, so this was one of the contributions in this paper. This evidence suggested that teachers’ data literacy played a role in both digital teaching competence and empowering students. Specifically, improved data literacy can enhance teacher to empower students. In general, good data literacy can provide students with a more adequate data basis and provide students with more personalized learning support. Some studies showed that specialized training for teachers, which would help teachers enhance their data literacy, was critical to meeting the challenges of the post-pandemic era (Sánchez-Cruzado et al., 2021). Thus, improving data literacy is imminent (Papamitsiou et al., 2021).

Digital teaching competence as a dominant mediator

The results showed that digital teaching competence played a mediated role in empowering students. Digital teaching competence had a strong impact on empowering students, and hypothesis 4 was accepted. The results of this study showed that digital teaching competence were not only direct predictors of empowering students, but also as a dominant mediator for ICT attitude, skills, and data literacy. This suggested that improving teachers’ digital teaching competence would boost teachers to empower students. If so, the question became “How can we effectively improve teachers’ digital teaching competence?” Teacher training was an effective way to improve teachers’ digital teaching competence (Cabero-Almenara et al., 2021a; Fernández-Batanero et al., 2020). Gudmundsdottir and Hatlevik (2018) pointed out that the basic use of ICT in current training did not guarantee professional practice. Problems arise when the technical training was based primarily on technology rather than teaching aspects (Miguel-Revilla et al., 2020). Therefore, there were problems with the focus of teacher training, and the content of training needed to be innovated. Simply learning how to use ICT was no longer enough for teachers to teach digitally and empower students. Teacher training needed to focus on the specific context of teachers’ digital teaching by combing content, technology and pedagogy. Therefore, the teachers’ digital teaching competence should become the top priority in teacher ICT training, which was the most direct influencing factor for empowering students. However, teacher training programs had long ignored the need for teachers’ digital teaching competence. It was now necessary for researchers or institutions to assess the reality of teachers so that policy makers could develop the required measures (Napal Fraile et al., 2018). Otherwise, the efforts invested in training may be largely ineffective without considering what teachers really needed in the classroom (Miguel-Revilla et al., 2020). Meanwhile, technology developers should pay attention to minimalist technology, which should be convenient to use in teaching and lesson preparation (Kafyulilo et al., 2016). Technology using purpose was to make digital technology more convenient for teachers, truly solve teachers’ problems, and reduce the burden on teachers.

In addition to the above findings, this study also found that the years of teaching experience and school level also affected teachers’ digital teaching competence and empowering students. For years of teaching experience, it was found that teachers with 6-15 years of teaching experience had the strongest digital teaching competence, while teachers aged 26-35 had the weakest digital teaching competence. Similar to the previous study, Cabero-Almenara et al. (2021a) found that teachers who had 4-14 years of teaching experience had higher digital teaching competence than younger and experienced teachers. The younger teachers seemed to have higher ICT skills, but the use of technology was superficial. Therefore, it was necessary for younger teachers to develop the teaching competence to integrate technology in teaching. Compared with the younger teachers, the experienced teachers tended to have weaker ICT attitude, ICT skills, and data literacy, resulting in experienced teachers having relatively weak digital teaching competence. However, we found that teachers with 1-5 years of teaching experience had the strongest competence to empower students. From the perspective of school level, primary school teachers had the highest digital teaching competence and empower students, secondary school teachers had the lowest digital teaching competence and empowering students, and kindergarten teachers were in between. This can be explained by the fact that secondary school teachers, under the pressure of students’ high-stakes tests, have to train students ability to achieve high marks in these tests, with no time or energy to consider empowering students.

Conclusion, limitation and future research

This study explored the impact of ICT attitude, ICT skills and data literacy on empowering students, mediating teachers’ digital teaching competence. Participants included 629 K-9 teachers. The findings showed that data literacy significantly predicted teachers’ digital teaching competence and had a significant direct impact on empowering students. In addition, digital teaching competence, as dominant mediator in ICT attitude, ICT skills, and data literacy, strongly predicted empowering students in classroom. By revealing the relationship among ICT attitude, ICT skills, data literacy, digital teaching competence and empowering students, this study put forward new ideas and directions for teachers’ continuing education. It is suggested that teachers’ data literacy should be integrated in continuing education to enhance their digital teaching competence and to empower students in the future.

There are some limitations in this study. First, the sample in this study were from China. Therefore, the results could not simply be generalized to other countries. In addition, there were fewer male teachers in the sample. Second, this study was investigated by self-reporting. While this way was the most used measurement tools, it can be easy to overestimate or underestimate a teacher’s competence. Nonetheless, some self-reported studies, which appear to be increasingly reliable by giving the large sample, provided important information about teachers’ digital competence (Lucas et al., 2021; Scherer et al., 2017; Siddiq et al., 2016). Finally, there may be other factors that influence teachers’ digital teaching competence to empower students. Future study can integrate more factors (such as communication and collaboration, information responsibility, etc.) and consider other qualitative research methods to analyze the reasons in teachers’ digital teaching competence under different factors. In addition, future research should explore about how to promote teachers’ digital teaching competence for empowering students from different aspects, for example, digital capacity, digital learning competency, collaborative skills, etc.