A comparative study of social network usage and adoption among Turkish prospective teachers

Abstract

Research on educational usage of social networks focused on university students because of their more intense usage of medium. In this context, it is necessary to determine social network usage objectives, adaptation levels and patterns of prospective teachers as future educators. The main purpose of this study is to analyze prospective teachers in terms of intended uses of social network sites and the level of adoption of social networks. Research was conducted with 453 prospective teachers' studying at the faculties of education in Marmara, a state university and Maltepe, a foundation university in Istanbul. In this study universities were also compared by their types and differences were found. For data collection, Intended Use of Social Networking Sites Scale and The Social Network Adoption Scale were used. In addition, authors developed a Personal Information Form to determine prospective teachers' demographic characteristics and patterns of use of social networks. For this study, comparative and relational analysis techniques were used and statistical results have been obtained. The results showed that (a) Prospective teachers' duration of use of social networks varies according to the type of foundation or state university; (b) Prospective teachers studying in both types of university, do not prefer social networks for discovery and recognition of themselves and their peers; (c) Prospective teachers' rates of educational use of social networks is quite high; (d) Prospective teachers' adoption levels of social networks is high.