Digital literacy and academic performance in visual arts teacher education in Ghana

Abstract Despite growing evidence that digital literacy supports student learning, little is known about its relationship to perceived academic performance among pre-service visual arts teachers, particularly within teacher education in Ghana. Grounded in Connectivism and Social Role Theory, this study examined the relationship between digital literacy and perceived academic performance and investigated whether gender moderates this relationship. A cross-sectional quantitative survey was conducted among 258 Ghanaian pre-service visual arts teachers using validated measures of digital literacy and perceived academic performance. Data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), complemented by robustness analyses of non-linearity and endogeneity. The results indicated that digital literacy positively predicted perceived academic performance (β = 0.685, p < .001), explaining 52.6% of the variance. Contrary to the hypothesised moderating effect, the interaction between digital literacy and gender was not statistically significant (β = 0.130, p = .264), providing insufficient evidence that the relationship differed between male and female students within the present sample. Robustness analyses further identified a small but statistically significant negative quadratic component (β = −0.081, p = .047), suggesting diminishing marginal gains in perceived academic performance at higher levels of digital literacy. At the same time, the Gaussian copula test indicated no evidence of endogeneity. The findings provide discipline-specific evidence that digital literacy is associated with improved perceived academic performance among Ghanaian pre-service visual arts teachers, while highlighting the importance of considering potential non-linear effects when examining digital literacy in teacher education.