Digital culture, cultural capital and technological capital: An analysis of pedagogical practices in Higher Education

This paper analyzes and discusses the theoretical construction of the concept of technological capital, grounded on the concept of cultural capital, based on research on the use of digital technologies in the pedagogical practices within initial teacher training courses. The research problem focused on identifying the characteristics of professors' pedagogical practices and identifying some innovative practices defined by which pedagogical actions professors and students consider innovative. The paper presents the theoretical and methodological path that allowed us to relate digital culture, cultural capital, and technological capital based on the analysis of professors' pedagogical practices. The methodological design comprises bibliographic review, course project analysis, online survey, and interviews. We built the empirical basis of the study on the data of 220 respondents to the online survey and 45 semi- structured interviews developed with students and professors of undergraduate courses of a Public Higher Education Institution. Based on the data from the surveys, we constituted indices of social and pedagogical use of digital technologies, which in turn resulted in the professors' technological capital index. The research allows the theoretical and empirical conceptualization of technological capital, and defines the main challenges for the integration of digital technologies in the pedagogical practices of higher education professors, meaning to develop innovative practices.