Digital Competence has been broadly explored and studied, being considered a complex and multifaceted notion, including diverse dimensions (Marín & Castañeda, 2022). The current definition from the European Commission (2019) considers it as “the confident, critical and responsible use of, and engagement with, digital technologies for learning, at work, and for participation in society” (p. 10). This definition –that is an update from the original more technical stated by the Commision in 2006– emphasizes some of the dimensions of a critical digital competence that are less considered in the literature on digital competence compared to the digital competence as such or in general. This “modern” conceptualization puts the focus on going beyond technical competences and involves aspects such as the understanding power dynamics in the digital world, resist misinformation and empowerment of individuals for social change (Dooly & Darvin, 2022; Kozyreva et al., 2023; Prinsloo, 2022). These are elements highly related to learners’ agency in open environments. However, the relationship among these concepts is still rather unexplored.  

As part of the Spanish research project PID2022-136291OA-I00 "Critical Digital Competence: Towards Agency for Learning through Open Educational Practices" (CoDiCri) (https://competecs.udl.cat/en/projects/research/codicri/), which is committed to the exploration of these relationships, a systematic review of critical digital competence was conducted by the authors of this contribution (Marín et al., in press). A sample of 138 studies were analysed to conceptualize the concept and study educational practices and needs for its development. The main findings pointed out that there were different traditions and considerations of the term, as well as varied related words, with no clear and common definition. Also, the educational practices included varied foci of critical digital competence; among others: ensuring digital safety and security, challenging power structures behind digital technologies, and fighting misinformation. The study also revealed the scarce presence of frameworks focused on the concept.  

Within the frame of the first design-based research phase (McKenney & Reeves, 2012) of analysis of the CoDiCri project, the first objective was to Establish the bases of critical digital competence for agency for learning and its connection with open education in higher education, as well as its current situation in the Spanish university system. As part of this objective, apart from the systematic literature reviews on the three key concepts of the project conducted (Marín et al., in press; Marín et al., 2025; Abascal et al., under review), a conceptual framework on critical digital competence has been developed and validated. At the ECER25 conference, we will present the results of the expert validation and the final conceptual framework. 

The conceptual framework has been developed through the grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). First, in a phase 0, the project researchers conducted three different systematic literature reviews (Gough et al., 2017), one per concept related to the project (critical digital competence, agency and open educational practices). The coding phase (Saldaña, 2013) of the studies included in the review (critical digital competence: 144; agency: 84; open educational practices: 101) lead to qualitative coded reports regarding the definition, the pedagogical justification and the intersection concerning each of those concepts, which were part of the research questions of the systematic reviews. These reports were used for qualitative analysis using the software MAXQDA in four phases: Phase 1: Preparation of data and set of work rules for teamwork; Phase 2: Development and definition of the initial coding set, testing and adapting it; Phase 3: Collaborative data coding; Phase 4: Creative coding and theory construction through a concept map developed with MAXMaps. After the generation of the framework, a Delphi survey study (Bond et al., 2021) was conducted in order to validate it. The experts were selected according to their identification as authors of a publication linked to an approach, framework or model related to some extent to critical digital competence. The panel was designed to be anonymous for the participants and conducted online in two rounds, with 12 international experts involved in the first round and 10 of them taking part in the second round. All experts signed an informed consent of the study before taking part in it. In the first round, experts were asked about their background related to the concept and to evaluate the conceptual framework by suggesting modifications and additions to both components and relations, as well as a whole. In the second round, consensus about three aspects was sought: a) an initial, tentative definition of critical digital competence, b) the addition of different elements to the conceptual framework, and c) its modification for readability.

The conceptual framework on critical digital competence developed and validated describes the components of critical digital competence and its relationships with agency for learning and open educational practices. It answers to the following research question: what is critical digital competence and how is it connected to agency for learning and open educational practices? Although based on systematic literature reviews, it makes a novel contribution to the field of educational technology, as well as to the EU Commission definition of digital competence, by offering a multifaceted vision of the critical digital competence that considers different traditions and approaches. This is done by uncovering the specific nuances of the relationship among the critical element of the digital competence, the learners' agency and their implementation through open educational practices. The conceptual framework on critical digital competence elaborates on which its components are, its aims, the requirements to be developed, why it is important (justification) and ways and support for its development. The framework developed and validated will be used now as the conceptual basis for the generation of open educational activities proposals that promote student agency putting the emphasis on the critical digital competence. They will be also implemented in different courses of teacher education programmes of several Spanish and Catalan speaking universities. These implementations will help validate the framework in practice and improve it based on the context. Future work could involve the validation/adaptation of the conceptual framework in specific geographical contexts, educational levels and disciplines. Acknowledgments: Grant PID2022-136291OA-I00, funded by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and “ERDF A way of making Europe”. Victoria I. Marín also acknowledges the support of the Grant RYC2019-028398-I funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and “ESF Investing in your future".

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