Evaluation of information technology teacher competencies according to the opinions of instructors, preservice teachers and teachers

The main purpose of the study is to evaluate the special field competencies of information technologies teachers who graduated from the Computer Education and Instructional Technologies (CEIT) departments and programs of Education Faculties that have been implemented by the Higher Education Council since 2006 ? 2007 academic years, according to the opinions of information technologies instructors, preservice teachers and teachers.Within the framework of this general purpose, the mixed method, which includes both qualitative and quantitative aspects, was used in the present study. The survey method was used in the quantitative dimension of the study while the interview method was used in the qualitative dimension of the study. Research design was selected as the explanatory design and the instructors, pre-service teachers and teachers? opinions which were obtained through the scale regarding with information technology teacher competencies were analyzed quantitatively in the study. Also, interviews conducted with information technology teachers working at primary schools were analyzed qualitatively. In the quantitative dimension of this study, the ?Information Technologies Teacher Competencies Scale (ITTC)? was used, which was developed within the scope of the research in order to determine teacher competencies. For the qualitative dimension of the study, the semi-structured interview form was used, which was prepared within the scope of the competencies used in the quantitative dimension. Data was gathered from two types of population and from two types of population, the first of which consisted of 460 pre-service teachers studying in their final years of the Department of Computer and Instructional Technologies Education of 19 public universities in the academic year of 2010-2011 and 79 instructors. The second group of population includes teachers who graduated from CEIT departments of Education Faculties and who are working at primary schools affiliated with the Turkish vMinistry of National Education. Information Technologies Teacher Competencies Scale (teacher form) was applied with 93 teachers working in the central districts of the cities of Aydın, Denizli and Muğla and interviews were done with thirty-six - 36 teachers (at least 10 teachers from each city), who were willing to be interviewed with, among the 93 teachers to whom the scale was applied. Data gathered was analyzed with the SPSS program. Personal information of instructors, pre-service teachers and teachers were shown as in forms of tables using frequency (f) and percentage (%) values. In order to determine to what level pre-service teachers and teachers possess the competencies listed in the scale, total scores for each competency item and arithmetic mean ( X ) and standard deviation (sd) according to these total scores were calculated, since this enables a general description of instructor, teacher and pre-service teacher responses. The information obtained as a result was interpreted in a five point rating from the lowest to highest level (very low level-1, low level-2, medium level-3, high level-4, very high level-5) system. In order to determine whether there was a significant difference between the opinions of instructors according to their gender, title and experience and the opinions of pre-service teachers according to their gender and the opinions of teachers according to their gender and experience, collected data were analyzed with the Mann-Whitney U test. In order to compare the opinions of the instructor, pre-service teacher and teacher groups, the Kruskal Wallis H test was used, and the Mann-Whitney U test was used to examine which groups cause the difference. Interviews done within the scope of the qualitative aspect of the study were recorded with a voice recording device, and the opinions of one of the participants who did not allow the use of a voice recording device were recorded manually. Also, manual notes were taken throughout all the interviews. The recordings of the interview were initially transcripted in Microsoft Word format, checked with the written notes and saved as a word document as raw data. Interview data was analyzed with the content analysis method. Briefly, as a result of the study, at the end of the practices conducted with instructors, pre-service teachers and teachers, no significant difference were found among the opinions of instructors on competencies of information technologies preservice teachers in all five dimensions of the scale in terms of gender, title and viexperience variables. It was found that for pre-service teachers in terms of gender there was difference only in the fields of technological applications and support competencies in favor of male participants. Teachers? opinions towards their own competencies significantly differ in terms of gender in all five dimensions of the scale at the technological applications, support competencies and learning- teaching competencies dimensions in favor of males while no significant difference was found in terms of experience. When instructors, pre-service teachers and teachers were compared within each other as three groups, teacher opinions were found to be the group with the highest average in all five dimensions of the Information Technologies Teacher Competencies Scale. When the source of the significant difference was examined, it was seen that teachers had the highest rank averages. Following the teachers, instructors were found as the second and pre-service teachers had the lowest ranking average among the three groups. Themes named as teacher training, designing the instruction process, use of information technologies, information technologies teachers, evaluation and schoolcommunity works were obtained as a result of the analyses of interviews conducted with the information technologies teachers. It was found out that there are some deficiencies in teachers? university education in some points; university education of teachers does not completely match with their jobs and they obtain some competencies with experience; teachers do not use their education in some issues like programming languages. Also, the following conclusions were made: The course hours and educational settings are insufficient; the course is underestimated by administrators, other teachers and parents since it is an elective course; course teachers make use of internet sources while teaching it; students need to be educated on this issue; course teachers act as a formatter and have trouble in terms of the tasks performed; it causes anadverse effect that the course is not evaluated; teachers mostly make use of the internet for their professional development and parents do not often interact with the teachers of this field.Key Words: Information technologies pre-service teachers, information technologies teachers, teacher opinions, teacher competencies.