Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2022, 38(3)

Implications for practice 
There are two lines of implications for the current study. The first deals with TDC development as a shared 
and widespread concern among a range of stakeholders in the HE context. The impact of TDC development 
in HE is felt far beyond institutional contexts as a motor for broader societal change considering that teacher 
training and teacher professional development is a fundamental setting for research in this area, influencing 
DC development in K-12 education and TDC encompasses the enabling of student DC and, therefore, the 
training of future professionals across a range of disciplines is directly affected by teacher competence in 
this area. 
Many of the implications for practice have focused on either TDC training or evaluation programs as 
solutions; however, institutions need to strategically enable TDC development through an integrated and 
ecological perspective, understanding that training proposals are only one piece of a larger systems-based 
approach. Although developing DC awareness during initial teacher training is essential, there is a range of 
interconnected components which relate to TDC development beyond training which need to be considered, 
such as developing an institutional culture which strategically identifies TDC as a priority. Developing such 
a culture involves building goals and visions which are formulated in policy-related documents on multiple 
levels of both institutions and the educational system more broadly. It also includes providing optimal 
working conditions and opportunities for teachers to develop this important competency autonomously and 
collaboratively with colleagues and students. Further, it is critical to recognise the link between teaching 
competence and pedagogical leadership, curricular development and renewal, technological and 
institutional infrastructure, governance and academic leadership and the links and interactions between 
them, all of which affect teachers and their teaching practices. 
The second line of implications concerns methodological considerations at both the systematic review and 
primary study level. Firstly, if critical appraisal continues to be overlooked when conducting systematic 
reviews, it will be difficult to assess the quality of work, with limitations in terms of rigour and quality. A 
booming research industry in TDC shows no signs of slowing down and systematic reviews will likely 
continue to emerge to synthesise the most recent evidence and allow researchers to keep up to date in a 
fast-moving field. Methodological guidelines from both education research (Polanin et al., 2017; Zawacki-
Richter et al., 2020) and the health sciences (Aromataris et al., 2015; Pollock et al., 2021) should be 
followed for overview procedures, ensuring the highest standard of work possible.