Investi̇gati̇on of physi̇cal educati̇on and sports teacher candi̇dates' metaverse knowledge levels accordi̇ng to vari̇ous vari̇ables

This study was conducted to examine the metaverse knowledge levels of prospective physical education and sports teachers according to various variables. The population of the study consisted of students studying in Bingöl University Faculty of Sports Sciences undergraduate programs in the 2023-2024 academic year, while the sample consisted of 269 undergraduate students, 98 female and 171 male, studying in the departments of Physical Education and Sports Teaching, Sports Management, Coaching Education and Recreation in the Faculty of Sports Sciences. Within the scope of this study, the survey technique, which is one of the quantitative analysis methods, was used in data analysis. This questionnaire was created in two parts. The first part included the "Personal Information Form" developed by the researcher, and the second part used the "Metaverse Knowledge Scale" created by Süleymanoğulları et al. (2022). The analysis of the data obtained was made through SPSS 26 package program. In the first part of the questionnaire, frequency, standard deviation, mean, percentage, etc. were used to determine the demographic characteristics and skewness and kurtosis analysis values were used to determine whether the scale scores were normally distributed. In the data, t test was used for pairwise group comparisons and ANOVA test was used for more than two groups. Tukey, one of the post hoc tests, was used to see the difference between the groups as a result of the ANOVA test. As a result, it was determined that there was no statistically significant difference in age and gender variables according to the mean scores of physical education teacher candidates' metaverse knowledge scale (p>0.05). However, it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference in the variables of departments, grade level, daily internet usage time, internet usage skills and hearing the term metaverse according to the mean scores of the metaverse knowledge scale of prospective physical education teachers (p<0.05).