The objective of this work was to take a close look at the profile of the digital competence of pre-service early childhood and primary school teachers. To this end, 200 students from Education degrees participated in filling out the Perceptions Questionnaire on Digital Competence. The results show that future teachers present a medium level of digital competence and have some difficulties with the dimension related to the creation of content. Also, results show how over the years, and sometimes over the courses, the dimensions of teaching digital competence improve significantly. No significant differences were found regarding type of university and gender. These results have important implications for curriculum design and teacher training regarding digital competence development in pre-service teachers.

Developing critical thinking skills appears to be a challenge for higher education institutions. However, little is known about the students’ points of view regarding the methodologies they consider to foster the development of this competence. To answer this question, a total of 263 Spanish university students participated in this study and were asked what they understood by critical thinking and the methodologies they considered to be the most effective for developing it. The results indicated that, based on students’ points of view, there were six methodologies that mainly contributed to developing critical thinking: Debates, project-based learning, practices in real contexts, doing research, cooperative learning, and case studies. These results were unanimous regardless of the student’s understanding of critical thinking: Analyzing/organizing, reasoning/arguing, questioning/asking oneself, evaluating, taking a position/taking a decision, compromising/acting. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications for teachers and educational institutions in relation to the development of critical thinking in higher education.

It is though that those students who better manage their time and perceive themselves to be more effective in the tasks they perform are thought to be due, in part, to a stronger understanding and command of digital competence. This competence allows students to know and use a greater number of tools and techniques to respond to the problems that arise in their academic career, favouring the reduction of perceived stress. To test this hypothesis, a total of 200 students from different degrees of Education and universities participated in the study, who answered the Digital Competence Questionnaire in University Students, the Spanish version of Time Management Behaviour Questionnaire, the Scale of Perceived Self-efficacy in academic situations, and the Scale of Global Perception of Stress. The results show how the starting hypothesis is fulfilled in that time management and academic self-efficacy function as mediators between digital competence and types of positive or negative stressors. Finally, these findings implications are discussed.

Estadística para no estadísticos: una guía básica sobre la metodología cuantitativa de trabajos académicos. Libro publicado por 3Ciencias.

Background: With the integration of artificial intelligence into educational processes, its impact remains to be discovered.Objective: The aim of the present study was to determine whether, after a 7‐month intervention in which a subject of artificial intelligence was taught, students improved their psychological needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness, potentially leading to an increase in their intrinsic motivation towards learning. Additionally, the study examined the impact of students' use of ICT and the influence of gender along the intervention.Methods: This longitudinal study included a total of 50 adolescents from Secondary Education, who responded to a series of scales to measure the main constructs of perceived competence, autonomy, relatedness and intrinsic motivation at two different times (T1 and T2).Results: The results showed that, regardless of gender and the frequency of academic or non‐academic use of ICT, statistically significant improvements were observed only in the need for relatedness. Likewise, an analysis of structural equation models revealed that students' initial competence (T1) was the main predictor of their initial motivation (T1), and having this initial motivation was essential for further improving motivation after the intervention (T2). Similarly, each basic psychological need at its initial time point (T1) significantly predicted that same psychological need at its final time point (T2), with considerably high explained variances.Conclusions: These results shed some light on the potential effect that AI‐based interventions can have on the basic psychological needs of secondary education students.