The Relationship between Epistemological Beliefs and Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK)

Abstract

Changing developments in the 21st century have also affected technology and the epistemological beliefs of teachers. For this purpose, the epistemological beliefs and Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) levels of primary school teachers and social studies teachers, gender, age, professional seniority, educational status, branch variables, and the relationship between epistemological belief and TPACK were examined in this study. The study group of the research consists of primary school teachers working in public primary school and social studies teachers working in public secondary schools in the provinces and districts of Istanbul, Antalya and Isparta. The selection of the study was made with the appropriate sampling method, which is one of the non-accidental sampling methods. 178 primary school teachers and 48 social studies teachers participated in the research. Independent sample t-test, Kruskal-Wallis test and Pearson Correlation Analysis were used in data analysis. According to the results obtained from the research, both primary school and social studies teachers have a high level of belief in the sub-dimension of effort. It was observed that both primary school teachers and social studies teachers had high TPACK levels. Considering the epistemological belief scale, no significant difference was observed according to the age, education level and professional seniority of the primary school teachers. There was no significant difference in social studies teachers according to the gender variable. According to the results obtained from the TPACK scale and its sub-dimensions, a significant difference was observed in terms of gender and professional seniority of primary school and social studies teachers. A low level of positive correlation was found between the effort scores of the primary school teachers and TK, CT, TPK, TCK and TPACK total scores.