A holistic bibliometric review of teachers’ ICT competence research in higher education

PurposeThe purposes of this study are fourfold: (1) to explore the state of ICT competency framework for teachers in higher education, (2) to identify general themes and trends in publications, key publication resources, authors, affiliations and countries in the domain of teachers’ ICT competence in higher education, (3) to investigate the relationships among author keywords to understand the interconnectedness within the research on teachers’ ICT competence in higher education and (4) to investigate the thematic evolution of author keywords to better understand the current situation and future research trends.Design/methodology/approachThis study details the bibliometric methodology used in terms of performance analysis and thematic evolution of author keywords and reports the results of systematically analyzing 275 Scopus-indexed publications on teachers’ ICT competence and ICT competency framework for teachers in higher education from July 25th, 2008 to June 7th, 2024.FindingsThe results of this bibliometric review paper show that the synthesized teachers’ ICT competency framework offers greater flexibility and enables other HEIs (higher education institutes) to contextualize these standards for developing teachers’ ICT competence based on their specific needs. Moreover, the rigorous bibliometric analysis reveals increasing trends in exploring higher education teachers’ ICT competence, driven by the growing integration of ICT into educational practices. Additionally, the thematic evolution of author keywords illuminates emerging research themes such as ICT competence and distance learning, which provides valuable and novel insights into the current and future directions of the field.Practical implicationsThe ICT competency framework for higher education teachers can be beneficial for improving their ICT competence and further promoting students’ achievements and HEIs’ performance. Simultaneously, the findings of our thematic analysis of author keywords suggest that these thematic clusters can be valuable resources for informing institutional policy and providing novel research directions in this field.Originality/valueThis study addresses current research gaps in the field of ICT competency framework for teachers as well as higher education teachers’ ICT competence by utilizing advanced bibliometric analyses such as thematic mapping to systematically review higher education teachers’ ICT competence. Based on the results obtained through thematic analysis of authors’ keywords from July 25th, 2008 to June 7th, 2024, it proposes new research directions, laying the foundation for future investigations, thereby aiding researchers in developing this area further.