Computer competencies necessary for preservice teacher preparation programs

The purpose for conducting this study was to develop a practitioner list of computer competencies for use in the training of preservice teachers. The competencies were developed through a survey of preservice teachers, cooperating-teachers, and faculty members in Teachers Colleges at the Universities of Nebraska in Lincoln, Omaha, and Kearney. By use of a stratified random sampling method, 50 teacher educators, 50 preservice teachers, and 50 cooperating teachers were selected. A total of 150 surveys were mailed to the sample--50 to preservice teachers, 50 to cooperating teachers, and 50 to teacher educators. A total of 131 responses were returned--42 from the teacher educators, 45 from the cooperating teachers, and 44 from the preservice teachers. Thus, the rate of return for the survey was 87 percent. All respondents thought the ability to initialize and format diskettes, make backups of files and disks, and operate a mouse or trackball; the ability to set up and print; and the ability to load a program from a diskette and save it were the most important competencies. Computer programming competencies were rated as least important. To answer the second research question, a MANOVA procedure was used. Statistically significant differences were found for the three groups among the five dependent variables (computer programming, software, hardware, computer literacy, and computer application) (p $\u3c$.10, multivariate F = 1.82). The Wilks test value was 0.868. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that the type of respondent was significant for the computer application dependent variable only. The results of a Tukey follow-up test for the computer application dependent variable showed the mean scores of faculty members and cooperating teachers were significantly different at the 0.05 level. Faculty members perceived the computer applications competencies to be significantly more important than cooperating teachers