Investigating relationship between attitude towards technology and TPACK education competencies of pre-service teachers taking pedagogical formation training: The case of Nevşehir H.B.V. University

https://ejercongress.org/pdf/BildiriKitab%C4%B12015.pdfThe educational system that helps the development of a society and individuals cannot be considered separate from technology in the 21st century. Therefore, the ultimate goal of education institutions is that candidate teachers are equipped with sufficient knowledge and skills in the field of technologies as well as subject area knowledge and pedagogical formations and that they graduate from their training as technology literate individuals. In the last two decades, the rapid development has been seen in Information and Communication Technologies. The development in the learning and teaching process relating to technologies has become an important part of the process of education. To use technology in educational processes requires teachers' competencies in technology. Teachers need to have a knowledge of content, technology and pedagogy. Therefore, this requirement has made the process of technology integration into education more important. The technology integration aims to use technology efficiently in all classes. Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge, referred to as TPACK, is one of the ways to describe and explain teachers’ knowledge and skills concerning technology integration. The TPACK model has interdependent components of teachers’ knowledge: pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge and technological knowledge. TPACK shouldn’t be regarded as a simple combination of three independent domains; instead, pedagogy, content and technology are interdependent each of which affects one another. Teachers are trained in Education Faculties in Turkey. Pre-service teachers’ TPACK development is a main concern of teacher preparation programs in Education Faculties. Students spend four/five years to learn content, pedagogical and technological knowledge in teacher preparation program. Moreover, in this process the students take part in school experience applications. The idea behind the school experience application is to enable pre-service teachers to cope with situations they face during the training and their future teaching practices. As a result, Education Faculties are required to facilitate prospective teachers in terms of TPACK. It has been acknowledged that TPACK can envision pre-service and in-service teachers on integrating technology into education. According to researches, technology and computer classes can fail at providing pre-service teachers with the competence of technology integration, which may later result in failure of using technology in education. Hence, what they think of technology is crucial in benefiting from its opportunities efficiently. That is, teachers’ attitude towards technology and TPACK competencies can be considered as two significant variables in learning and teaching process. Apart from Education Faculties, pedagogical formation training is the other source of teacher preparation in Turkey. The pedagogical formation training refers to the certificate education lasting for one year. After the training period, they will have a certificate which means they are capable of teaching. It has been acknowledged that just content knowledge is insufficient without pedagogical and technological ones. Consequently, it is important to determine their TPACK levels and attitudes toward technology. The purpose of this study is to determine pre-service teachers’ attitude towards technology and TPACK competencies and to investigate the relationship between attitude towards technology and TPACK competencies of these pre-service teachers taking pedagogical formation training in different subject areas.This study was designed in screening model. Screening model is a research approach that aims to describe a situation that we already have in the past or in present. So, in this study, preservice teachers' TPACK levels and attitude towards technology were described. Also, the relationship between these two variables has been examined. The participants of the study consisted of 300 pre-service teachers who are taking the pedagogical formation training in different subject areas at the Nevşehir H.B.V. University during the academic year of 2013-2014. In the research, two different measuring tools of quantitative methods were applied to pre-service teachers. These tools have 5-item likert type scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” ("I can do it easily"," I can do it "," I can do it in part”," I cannot do it" and " I definitely can’t do it"). In order to determine preservice teachers’ attitude towards technology, “The Scale of Attitude Towards Technology”, which consisted of 19 items, 5 subscales and was developed by Yavuz (2005), was used. Further, In order to determine preservice teachers’ TPACK competences "TPACK-Deep-Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Scale", which consisted of 33 items, 4 factors and was developed by Kabakçı-Yurdakul et al. (2012) was applied.Firstly, invalid data were not included in the study. Then, accuracy of data was checked for the process of data analysis. Transferring the data to a computer was provided with SPSS 17 program. While analyzing the research data, Pearson Moments Multiplication Correlation is going to be used and interpreted to determine the relationship between technological pedagogical content knowledge competencies and attitude towards technology. Also, descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean) revealing levels of technological pedagogical content knowledge competencies and technology attitudes is going to used and and interpreted. Moreover, in the light of the findings, recommendations for implementation will be offered to practitioners