Digital literacy among primary school teachers: adaptation and validation of an instrument for inclusive education in Malaysia

Although inclusive education is widely recognized as essential, there appears to be a lack of appropriate instruments for assessing the digital literacy of teachers working in inclusive settings. To address this gap, an instrument to measure the digital literacy of primary school teachers involved in inclusive education in Malaysia was designed and validated. The instrument development process comprised three main phases: (1) formulation of generative items based on the theoretical framework, (2) validity analysis through expert validity and construct validity, and (3) reliability testing. A total of 387 in-service inclusive education teachers from public primary schools across Malaysia participated in the study. Five factors (information and data literacy in the inclusive classroom, communication and collaboration literacy in the inclusive classroom, digital content creation literacy in the inclusive classroom, problem-solving literacy in the inclusive classroom, and digital safety literacy in the inclusive classroom) were extracted using exploratory factor analysis. The standardized factor loadings of the instrument’s 32 items were between 0.788 and 0.913, and indicated a robust model fit through confirmatory factor analysis. The assessment of reliability yielded highly favorable results, and the convergent validity was also satisfactory. The instrument can be used to assess digital literacy among Malaysian primary school teachers in inclusive education and assist in the development of teachers’ digital pedagogical skills.