PRE-SERVICE EFL TEACHERS AS DIGITAL MATERIAL DESIGNERS: A CASE STUDY INTO THE TPACK DEVELOPMENT IN THE TURKISH CONTEXT


KAÇAR I. G.

Teaching English with Technology, cilt.22, sa.3-4, ss.107-130, 2022 (Scopus) identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 22 Sayı: 3-4
  • Basım Tarihi: 2022
  • Dergi Adı: Teaching English with Technology
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus, IBZ Online, Central & Eastern European Academic Source (CEEAS), EBSCO Education Source, ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), MLA - Modern Language Association Database
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.107-130
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Digital literacy, Digital materials, Pre-service teachers, Technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) development, Technology integration
  • Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

© 2022,Teaching English with Technology. All Rights Reserved.Pre-service teachers of the 21st century are expected to be equipped with both pedagogical and digital competence. In fact, teacher education programs should give prospective teachers the opportunity of becoming the designers of their own lessons instead of dictating them certain ways of integrating technology. The pre-service teacher education programs tend to fail to equip prospective teachers with a sound TPACK knowledge base, which is likely to pose a challenge for them in the way of effective technology integration. The aim of the 10-week qualitative study was twofold: (1) to examine the TPACK development of the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) pre-service teachers of English in Turkey at a private K-12 school and 2) to investigate how Turkish pre-service teachers’ TPACK knowledge was reflected in their digital materials. 24 pre-service EFL teachers who took the elective course “Designing and Using Digital Materials for ELT” in the spring semester of the 2020 and 2021 academic year and 9 in-service EFL teachers at a private K-12 school participated in the study. Purposeful sampling was used for the participant selection. The data were collected via pre-service teachers’ reflective journals as well as a technology integration observation instrument (for in-service teachers) (Harris et al., 2010) and analyzed via content analysis. The findings revealed that the pre-service teachers reported gains in terms of all the components of the TPACK framework (Koehler & Mishra, 2009) in varying degrees, with an enhanced awareness towards the purposeful integration of technology, content, and pedagogy.