Reconsidering digital skills: A theoretical questioning of the skills that define e-inclusion

This deliverable D.1.2. ‘Reconsidering digital skills: a theoretical questioning of skills that define e-inclusion’ entails a theoretical review of scientific literature that focuses on conceptualizing and measuring digital skills. Although digital skills such as information literacy, strategic skills, button knowledge etc. are commonly considered as key skills to fully participate to social and professional life, empirical research that studies to what extent digital skills impact life outcomes remains scarce. Therefore, this literature review will concentrate on this under- researched area and will investigate how digital competences are related to other transversal skills – i.e. problem solving skills, self-efficacy and determination, autonomy – also considered as crucial in our contemporary society. The literature review will question the added value of these transversal skills and explain if, how and why they should be developed.
The first part of this deliverable entails a theoretical exploration of the notions of autonomy, self-determination, self-efficacy, and problem-solving and examines to what extent these personal attributes are relevant for the discussion on digital skills and digital exclusion. The second part aims at examining to what extent these notions are integrated into existing models on digital skills. These models usually aim at describing, promoting and/or measuring the digital skills and underlying competences that are needed to become digitally skilled. A quick-scan analysis was employed in order to analyse 13 digital skills models and the digital skills they promote, which were translated into a series of indicators. The models selected for this study were identified through an extensive review of academic literature, scientific publications, and institutional reports and studies.