Exploration of the indicators of information and communication technologies at education faculties through pre-service teachers' viewpoints

The current study aimed to explore the indicators of information and communication technologies (ICT) at education faculties through pre-service teachers? viewpoints by adapting the ICT indicators stated in UNESCO (2002) and scrutinized further through international studies. Education faculty instructors were the focus of investigation in terms of content and pedagogy, and collaboration and networking indicators whereas the faculty organization itself was the focus in terms of social and technical issues. The study resorted to a cross-sectional survey design whose population consisted of pre-service teachers enrolled in education faculties. As the Turkish universities showed a heterogeneous distribution in terms of quality indicators, simple random sampling was considered ineffective. A combination of stratified random sampling and systematic sampling was applied. In this regard, to reduce the possibility that the sample might turn out to be unrepresentative of the population, the education faculty population was first subdivided into six parts based upon the knowledge of how each faculty stands relative to stratifying variables, and a sample is drawn randomly from each part. A personal information form and 75 Likert items developed by the researcher were administered to senior students at education faculties which were completed with a 49 percent response rate.While answering the research questions, correlational, exploratory and causal comparative techniques were applied. Exploratory techniques were used to have an overview of education faculties regarding ICT indicators, correlational techniques were used to see the relationships among continuous variables, and causal comparative techniques were used to see whether ICT indicators differed according to specific variables such as gender, university, department, and computer experience. Data analysis was realized through calculating descriptive statistics, internal consistency coefficients, tests of homogeneity of variance, t-tests and one-way between-groups analysis of variance (ANOVA).It was found that participants criticized the current situation of ICT indicators in their faculties, which included teaching-learning methods, learning program, learning communities, infrastructure, access, ease of use, technical support, health, ethics, policies and special education. On the other hand, their evaluations regarding professional development endeavors of the instructors were positive. Males? evaluations were significantly more positive than those of females in terms of teaching-learning methods, ease of use, technical support, policies and special education. Females? evaluations were more positive in terms of professional development and ethics. Evaluations regarding indicators differed according to universities and departments as well. As the indicators were quite related, it was rare to see a university which was successful in one and quite unsuccessful in another. Departments of Turkish Education, Educational Sciences, Fine Arts Education and Primary Education had problems with several dimensions of integrating ICTs. Finally, it was revealed that having a PC at home or the computer experience did not have an influence on ICT-related perspectives; rather, the frequency of computer use for instructional purposes had a positive effect on participants? evaluations.