Digital Competence Or Digital Use? Self-Assessed Skills and Observed Practices of Primary Teachers

Digital competence frameworks and self-assessment tools are widely used to indicate teachers’ readiness for digital transformation, yet their relationship to classroom practice remains underexplored. This study examines the alignment between primary teachers’ self-assessed digital competence and observed uses of digital technologies. A mixed-methods design combines SELFIE data from 246 teachers with structured classroom observations ana-lysed through the Digital Technology Impact Framework (DTIF). Results show higher confidence in operational domains (professional engagement, digital resources) and lower confidence in pedagogically demanding areas (assessment, learner empowerment, pupils’ digital competence). Observations reveal a parallel pattern: digital technologies are widely present but pre-dominantly used in supportive rather than transformative ways. By triangulating self-assessment and observation data, the study highlights the need to complement competence-oriented tools with practice-level evidence when evaluating digital integration in primary education.