Are preservice teachers really literate enough to integrate technology in their classroom practice? Determining the technology literacy level of preservice teachers

At the present time, many researchers conduct studies in order to ensure technology integration in education. But most of these studies are related to material design. Material is an important concept but it is also important to examine knowledge, skills and attitude, namely technology literacy, of students or teachers who would use these materials. Although technology literacy was investigated in some studies, data collection tools measured different variables. As knowledge, skills and attitude are different concepts, they need to be examined together to determine literacy level. Thus, the purpose of the study is to determine knowledge, skills and attitude about technology use of preservice teachers. Although most of preservice teachers said they had knowledge, skills and positive attitude to use technology in teaching activities, the results revealed that they had a low level of technology literacy in terms of knowledge and skills. The results showed that no relationship was found between knowledge/skill test scores and attitude, so preservice teachers could not correctly describe their level of technology literacy. As the results obtained from scale based on participants’ claims and those obtained from the tests were very contradictory, it is stated that would cause incorrect results and interpretations. The fact that preservice teachers didn’t take any technology related courses in their teacher training programs or they had such courses with insufficient contents was considered one of the main reasons for this low level. Therefore, courses about technology literacy must sufficiently be given in teacher training. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.SDK-2014-3098Acknowledgments This research was supported by Cukurova University Department of Scientific Research Project (Project Number: SDK-2014-3098)