An investigation of the relationship between digital literacy of social studies teachers and their roles and competencies in distance online education: Effects of social studies teachers' digital literacy

This study examines the effect of social studies teachers' digital literacy on their roles and competencies in online distance education and aims to reveal the relationship between these variables. In accordance with this main objective, the study investigated whether there are statistically significant differences between the personal characteristics of social studies teachers such as gender, age, in-service training, and their digital literacy and roles and competencies in online distance education. The study employed a correlational descriptive research design. Data were collected through the "Digital Literacy Scale" and the "Online Teacher Competency Scale" in addition to the personal information form. Due to the pandemic conditions, data were collected from 244 social studies teachers reached through the form created in Google documents. The obtained data were analyzed by transferring them to SPSS 22.0. T-Test and one-way ANOVA were applied to determine whether the variables of gender, age, and in-service training they received caused a statistically significant difference in the participating social studies teachers' roles and competencies in online distance education. The relationship between the effect on the social studies teachers' roles and competencies in online distance education and their digital literacy levels and any significant difference between them were determined using correlation analysis. As a result, this study determined that social studies teachers' digital literacy has a "high" effect on their roles and competencies in online distance education. It has been found that the digital literacy status of social studies teachers differs significantly in favor of men in terms of gender, there is no significant difference in terms of education level, professional seniority, and internet use, and there is a significant difference in favor of those who take courses in a distance education program. The data obtained on the online teacher roles and competencies of social studies teachers indicated no significant difference between female and male teachers. However, online teacher roles and competencies of social studies teachers differed significantly according to their education level and professional seniority, in favor of those who received postgraduate education and those working in the range of 10-15 years, respectively. Their online teacher roles and competencies also had a significant weak relationship with the variables of duration of internet use, taking courses related to distance education program and teaching time in online education