Digital Empowerment and Accounting Teachers' ICT Competencies in the Smart Education Era: An Empirical Study of Higher Education Institutions in China

Yin Haoming (Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha)
Ketut Agustini (Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha)
I Komang Sudarma (Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha)

Jurnal Paedagogy
Vol. 13 No. 4 (2026): October (IN PRESS)

This study aims to examine the relationship between digital empowerment and accounting professors’ ICT competence and to investigate how ICT competence is associated with student learning outcomes and classroom engagement in the era of smart education. Digital empowerment was operationalized through teachers’ professional development, institutional support, and technology-enhanced pedagogical integration, including the use of data visualization tools. A convergent mixed-methods design was employed to integrate quantitative and qualitative evidence. In the quantitative phase, data were collected from 118 undergraduate accounting students at universities in China using structured questionnaires measuring perceived teacher ICT competence, digital empowerment, student learning outcomes, and classroom engagement. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with accounting educators. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation analysis, regression analysis, and mediation analysis, whereas qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The quantitative findings indicated a positive and statistically significant relationship between digital empowerment and teachers’ ICT competence, with digital empowerment also emerging as a significant predictor of ICT competence. Higher levels of teachers’ ICT competence were further associated with stronger classroom engagement and better student learning outcomes. The qualitative findings complemented these results by highlighting the roles of ongoing professional development, institutional support, and purposeful pedagogical integration of digital technologies. In particular, the use of data visualization applications such as Power BI was perceived to support educators in creating more interactive, analytical, and data-oriented learning experiences. Overall, the findings suggest that digital empowerment may facilitate the development of accounting teachers’ ICT competence and support the effective integration of digital technologies into contemporary accounting education.