The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the wave of digital social transformation worldwide and pushed the “Accelerator Key” for the digital transformation of education in 2020. This transformation has also impacted in an all-around way in China. Taking Anhui province as a case study, this research explores socio-demographic factors influencing the digital competence level of pre- and in-service teachers of primary and secondary education in China. The quantitative methodological approach emphasizes the study subjects’ perception of their digital competencies in three factors: basic technology literacy, technical support learning, and technical support teaching. The study involved 250 pre-service teachers and 248 in-service teachers. The main findings are: (1) participants have good consciousness and attitudes towards using ICT in daily work, but their educational practice is weak; (2) in-service teachers have a digital competence level generally higher than pre-service teachers’, which might be their professional practice promote them to reflect on perceptions and attitudes regarding technological education; (3) for in-service teachers, there are significant differences between their digital competence level and age, years of teaching experience, educational background; (4) current ICT courses have no influencing on in-service teachers’ digital competence level, implying that current ICT training system may have problems. The study provides insights to improve pre-service teachers’ digital competence education in universities and develop well-designed in-service teachers’ ICT training courses.

According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, most of the countries have achieved gender parity in educational attainment. Furthermore, Latin America and Europe have more women than men enrolled in tertiary education. The problem arises when those numbers are analysed by degree studies. There is a gender gap in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), with a low number of women enrolled in those programs and even lower numbers of graduates. The universities have a key role to steer new conceptions and understanding of the females in STEM. The higher education institutions have to define measures and policies to reduce the gender gap in the careers of the future. This work aims to provide a proposal to analyse the gender equality gap in STEM as a first step to define gender equality action plans focused on processes of attraction, access and retention and guidance in STEM programs. The proposal was applied in ten Latin American universities from Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Mexico, and five European universities from Finland, Ireland, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom.