AI Insight
This study examined 776 pre-service physical education teachers in China and found that digital literacy is positively associated with digital teaching self-efficacy both directly and indirectly through professional identity and teaching self-efficacy. The research identified significant correlations between all variables, with digital literacy showing the strongest relationship with digital teaching self-efficacy. The serial mediation model revealed that professional identity and teaching self-efficacy serve as pathways linking digital literacy to digital teaching self-efficacy.
Why it matters
The findings suggest that preparing future physical education teachers for digital teaching may require integrated approaches that combine digital skills training with strengthening professional identity and general teaching confidence. This could inform teacher education programs seeking to enhance digital competencies, though the cross-sectional design means causal claims require further experimental validation.
Understand the Science
BackgroundThe digital transformation of education poses new demands on physical education (PE) teachers’ professional competencies. Pre-service PE teachers, as the future workforce, may have their digital teaching self-efficacy associated with digital literacy through indirect pathways.MethodsUsing convenience cluster sampling, 776 pre-service PE teachers from first- to fourth-year undergraduate PE programmes in five normal universities in Hubei Province, China, were surveyed online. Participants completed measures of digital literacy, professional identity, teaching self-efficacy, and Digital Teaching Self-Efficacy. SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 31.0 were used for descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, common method bias testing, and confirmatory factor analysis. PROCESS macro (Model 6) with 5,000 bootstrap samples was employed to test the serial indirect pathway model.ResultsDigital literacy was significantly and positively correlated with professional identity (r = 0.41), teaching self-efficacy (r = 0.38), and Digital Teaching Self-Efficacy (r = 0.44; all p < 0.001). The direct effect of digital literacy on Digital Teaching Self-Efficacy was significant (b = 0.249, β = 0.263, p < 0.001). The unstandardized indirect effects via professional identity and teaching self-efficacy were 0.0651 and 0.0703, respectively. The serial indirect pathway was significant, with an unstandardized effect of 0.0282, 95% CI [0.0180, 0.0409].ConclusionThis study explored the link between digital literacy and Digital Teaching Self-Efficacy among pre-service physical education teachers. The results are consistent with the model in which digital literacy is associated with digital teaching self-efficacy directly, and indirectly through professional identity, teaching self-efficacy, and their serial indirect pathway. These findings are consistent with the proposed indirect pathway linking digital literacy to higher Digital Teaching Self-Efficacy. These findings may help generate intervention hypotheses related to strengthening professional identity and providing guided digital teaching experiences. Such hypotheses should be tested through longitudinal studies or experimental designs before being translated into practice. Overall, this study offers empirical insights that may inform PE teacher preparation by integrating digital training with identity-building and self-efficacy development. Due to the cross-sectional design, all findings should be interpreted as correlational, not causal.