The role of university teachers’ 21st-century digital competence in their attitudes toward ICT integration in higher education: Extending the theory of planned behavior

Due to the massive integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in higher education, teachers need to be highly digital competent and have positive attitudes to manage their classes effectively. In this regard, the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu) introduces a paradigm known as 21st-century competence that all teachers should acquire. Recently, scholars have explored the dimension of teachers’ digital competence in the 21st century relating to a digital context. Thus, this explanatory study wants to take a step forward to add to the literature the role of university teachers’ 21st-century digital competence in their attitudes toward ICT integration. To meet the end, a questionnaire was designed and adminis-tered to 350 Iranian university teachers who implemented ICTs in their classes. The result of partial least squares analysis (PLS-SEM) reveals the significant rela tionship between university teachers’ information and data literacy, digital content creation, communication and collaboration, and problem-solving skills with three antecedents of behavioral intention and actual behavior for employing ICTs. Related pedagogical implications are addressed, such as running some teacher training programs for teachers to escalate their 21st-century digital competencies and making teachers aware of the role of these factors in managing their classes with ICTs. the role of 21st-century digital competence in university teachers’ attitudes toward ICT integration, particularly in EFL context. Our finding reveals that university teachers with a higher level of information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, and problem-solving competence can have positive attitudes toward utilizing ICTs in their classes. The findings have critical implications at both theoretical and practical levels.