Pre-service EFL Teachers as Digital Material Designers: A Case Study into the TPACK Development of EFL Pre-service Teachers in the Turkish Context

Date

2022-05-15

Author

Kaçar, Işıl Günseli

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PRE-SERVICE EFL TEACHERS AS DIGITAL MATERIAL DESIGNERS: A CASE STUDY INTO THE TPACK DEVELOPMENT OF EFL PRE SERVICE TEACHERS IN THE TURKISH CONTEXTProspective teachers of the 21st century are supposed to possess pedagogical and digital competence. It is crucial to providethe pre-service teachers with the opportunity to become digital material designers so that they can achieve effectivetechnology integration in their future classes. However, the pre-service teacher education programs are likely to provideprospective teachers with a strong basis in technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). This might constitute achallenge for the effective technology integration. This 10-week qualitative case study aimed to investigate the TPACKdevelopment of the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) pre-service teachers at a private K-12 school in the Turkish context asthey are engaged in developing digital teaching materials for EFL learners from the kindergarten level to Grade 7 at a privateK-12 school. It also explored how Turkish pre-service teachers’ TPACK knowledge was reflected in the digital materials theydeveloped. The participants were 24 pre-service teachers taking the elective course Designing and Using Digital Materials forELT and 9 in-service EFL teachers at a private K-12 school in the spring semester of the 2020 and 2021 academic year (duringthe COVID-19 pandemic). The in-service teachers in the study acted as mentors for the pre-service teachers’ digital materialdevelopment process. The pre-service teachers had an advanced level of proficiency in English and completed their Englishlanguage teaching methodology courses and a basic digitial literacy course prior to their involvement in the study. In-serviceEnglish teachers at the private K-12 school were those who were actively integrating technology into their teaching. Theyprovided the pre-service teachers with guidance, detailed and constructive feedback throughout their digital materialdevelopment process. The purposive sampling strategy was utilized for the participant selection strategy. Pre-service teachers’reflective journals and a technology integration assessment instrument (for in-service teachers) were used as the datacollection tools (Harris et al., 2014). The data were analyzed via content analysis. The findings suggested numerous gainsregarding the components of the TPACK framework (Koehler & Mishra, 2009) in different degrees and enhanced awarenesstowards the effective integration of technology, content and pedagogy.Keywords: technology integration, digital literacy, technological pedagogical content knowledge development, pre-serviceteachers, computer-assisted language learning, English as a Foreign Language context, digital materials

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/107652

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Department of Foreign Language Education, Conference / Seminar