Examination the Digital Competence of Teacher Candidates in Terms of Different Variables

Abstract

It has been essential to make use of technology in education as a result of the improvements in information and communication technology in the 21st century. Teachers, who are the organizers and the developers of learning environments, need to have a high level of consciousness with regard to digital competence. Thus, students can acquire digital competence only if teachers do it first. The aim of this study is to analyse the digital competence of teacher candidates in terms of different variables. The study group consisted of 200 teacher candidates who study at different departments of Ahmet Kelesoglu Faculty of Education, Necmettin Erbakan University. Screening model was used as the research method in the present study. As data collection tools, a personal data form which was developed by researchers and by which the demographic characteristics of the study group students were obtained, and “The Digital Competence Scale” which was developed by Akkoyunlu, Yilmaz Soylu & Caglar (2010) were used. The scale is 7 Likert type, 45 item and of four dimensions. Cronbach Alpha coefficients were calculated for the results of the scale reliability; and they were 0.86 throughout the scale, 0.94 in the first sub-dimension (Awareness), 0.84 in the second sub-dimension (Motivation), 0.78 in the third sub-dimension (Technical Access) and 0.81 in the fourth sub-dimension (Competence). The computer-aided statistical packaged program, SPSS was used in order to analyse the data collected, and the present study benefited from descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way analysis of variance and correlation methods. The study concluded that - when the digital competence of teacher candidates assessed in terms of gender in sub-dimensions of the scale - the digital competence awareness and the technical access levels of both male and female teacher candidates were high, however, their digital competence and motivation levels were close to low. Also, it has been revealed that overall average scores of teacher candidates from different branches differed significantly. Teacher candidates also differed significantly in having Internet and computers