A SURVEY STUDY CHARACTERIZING TURKISH PROSPECTIVE PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS' TPACK COMPETENCIES

Abstract

This book chapter presents a survey study about prospective primary school teachers' perceptions of their Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) competencies, differentiated according to variables such as gender, interest in new technologies, technology access, and technology use. The data were collected through the TPACK Scale developed by Schmidt et al. (2009) and translated into Turkish by Ozttirk and Horzum (2011). The research sample included 527 prospective fourth grade teachers being educated at seven universities, one each from seven regions of Turkey chosen via the clustered sampling method. Descriptive statistics were applied to analyze their perceptions of their TPACK based on responses to an open-ended question incorporating metaphors. To determine changes in the prospective primary school teachers' TPACK, the following analyses were applied: for gender, a t-test for independent samples; for technology access, use, and interest, a one-way ANOVA; and for their perceptions of their TPACK competencies, content analysis. According to the results, prospective primary school teachers' perceptions of their TPACK competencies were generally high. Moreover, the variables of gender, technology access and use, and interest in new technologies did affect their perceptions.