Information skills of Finnish basic education teachers

The data was collected 2017 - 2019 using the ICT skill test (developed in the Research Unit for the Sociology of Education; e.g., Kaarakainen, 2019, http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2621306) in Finland. The data consists of 4,988 teachers. Of those 24% are male and 76% are female teachers, aged 24-66 years (M = 46, SD = 9.5). 

THE test collected teachers’ background information (age, gender, postal code of place of employment, information on whether the teacher is a class or subject teacher) and teachers' responses to a questionnaire about their digital usage habits ("How often do you use digital technologies for... maintaining social relationships/communicating/running daily errands/following the news/ browsing the Internet for Information/creating digital content/sharing digital content/playing digital games/digital entertainment/learning” with a scale 0 = “never”, 1 = “sometimes, 2 = “weekly”, 3 = “daily”, 4 = “several hours per day”.) Digital activity is the sum variable of these usage purposes. Digital self-efficacy was measured by asking teachers to indicate the extent to which they see themselves as competent in the digital skills related to their work. Teachers were also asked if they had received adequate in-service training in digital skills in relation to the requirements of the job.

A sum variable  “information skills” was formed by summing up the items from the ICT skill test related to following themes: Retrieving information , processing information, and sharing information. A variable "urbanisation level" refers to the statistical classification of Finnish municipalities of the place of teachers' employment (school). Value 1 refers to rural areas, value 2 to semi-urban areas and value 3 to urban areas. Teacher type, instead, refers to the level of education of teaching, i.e., 0 = basic education and 1 = secondary education.