Examining the digital literacy levels of Turkish EFL teachers

Today, the necessity of digital technologies for ongoing communication among individuals, families, and friends is undeniable. Digital literacy (DL) has become a fundamental requirement for both professional and daily life in the 21st century. The swift integration of advanced digital tools into education offers EFL teachers chances to handle challenges and attain successful instructional results. Due to their crucial position in the digital environment, it is imperative for EFL teachers to proficiently employ a variety of contemporary digital tools relevant to their teaching. Consequently, acquiring, sustaining, and enhancing digital technology skills are vital for everyone, particularly EFL teachers. The present study aims to determine the DL levels of EFL teachers and examine whether there are any differences among their DL levels and gender, age, and years of teaching experience. It also aims to explore EFL teachers' views regarding their levels of DL, what digital tools and social media platforms they use, to portray the possible drawbacks and challenges they face while using digital tools, and to explore their suggestions to promote DL. The study is structured using the explanatory sequential research design, a mixed-method research design. Based on the purposes, 250 EFL teachers working in the Şahinbey district of Gaziantep, Turkey, during the 2021-2022 academic year and selected by convenience sampling participate in the questionnaire. The quantitative data was gathered through the Digital Literacy Scale, a 5-point Likert scale developed by Bayrakcı & Narmanlıoğlu (2021). For the qualitative data, some open-ended items were added to the questionnaire, and 17 EFL teachers were selected by purposive sampling to conduct semi-structured interviews, which is the other qualitative data collection stage of the research. As the study utilized two data collection tools, a two-phase data collection and analysis procedure was implemented. Lisrel 8.80 and SPSS 24 programs were used to analyze the quantitative data, while the content analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. According to the results of quantitative data, it was found that the EFL teachers had a moderate level of DL. Also, there was a significant relationship between EFL teachers' DL level and their age and gender, while there was no meaningful relationship between their DL level and teaching experience. Moreover, the qualitative data showed that the EFL teachers were knowledgeable about some aspects of DL, but they were still not competent enough to know the other aspects of DL. In addition, it was revealed that EFL teachers utilize various digital tools and social media platforms for different purposes in teaching and their daily lives. The possible drawbacks and challenges in using digital tools as reported by the EFL teachers, were mainly problems with time, motivation, and lack of support from the Ministry of National Education (MoNE). In addition, the EFL teachers suggested that they should participate in seminars, courses, or training sessions, research, or follow social media platforms to promote their DL skills. These findings imply that DL skills can be integrated into the curriculum of pre-service EFL teacher training programs, and in-service teachers might be encouraged to participate in teacher training courses on DL skills. In particular, a training, including hands-on experience and active participation of EFL teachers, might be conducted depending on the suggestions of the EFL teachers about how to promote DL skills. Lastly, the present study also implies that EFL teachers use social media platforms for teaching purposes. In that sense, establishing guidelines for the effective and responsible use of social media in educational contexts would contribute to fostering a supportive and collaborative online community among EFL teachers. Keywords: EFL teachers, Digital literacy level, Digital literacy skills, Digital tools, Social media platforms