Development and Validation of a Culturally Contextualised Digital Competence Framework for Nigerian Secondary School Teachers

This study develops and validates a culturally contextualised digital competence framework for secondary school teachers in Nigeria, addressing a significant gap in context-specific digital competence instruments for sub-Saharan African teacher populations. Existing international frameworks such as the European DigComp and UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers were developed in high-resource contexts and require substantial adaptation for Nigerian sociocultural, infrastructural, and pedagogical realities. The study employs a mixed-methods sequential instrument development design across four phases: systematic literature review, Delphi expert consultation with 30 Nigerian educational technology scholars and policy actors, exploratory factor analysis with 450 secondary school teachers drawn from all six geopolitical zones, and confirmatory factor analysis with a second independent sample of 380 teachers. The resultant Nigerian Teacher Digital Competence Framework comprises six validated domains: foundational digital operations, digital safety and ethics in Nigerian contexts, culturally responsive content creation, community-connected digital communication, adaptive technology problem-solving, and indigenous knowledge digitisation. Reliability coefficients across all sub-scales exceed 0.80. The framework constitutes an original, validated psychometric instrument and policy tool for Nigerian teacher digital competence assessment, professional development planning, and pre-service teacher education curriculum design. Keywords: digital competence framework, secondary school teachers, Nigeria, instrument development, cultural contextualisation