Individual innovativeness profiles of prospective teachers in computer education and instructional technology

In the new millennium, the concept of innovation is growing increasingly significant. Parallel to this, innovativeness is considered to be the key to development. Innovativeness has become ?a must? for making a difference either at individual or institutional or social levels nowadays. Especially the significant increase in the number of innovations in recent years, which resulted in shorter times for adaption of innovations, has caused individual innovativeness to become a necessity. This necessity of innovative individuals levels responsibility on educators in general and on information technologies teachers specifically. When this social transformation is considered, leading role in the integration of education and technology, diffusion of technological innovations in the society, and developing a vision of innovativeness has contemplated to be special area of competency for information technology teachers. In this regard, this study aims to determine individual innovativeness profiles of prospective teachers in Computer Education and Instructional Technologies (CEIT), and explore their perceived barriers to innovativeness.The study, which was realized throughout Turkey, employed a singular and correlational survey method. The population of the research constituted 1149 senior students at CEIT departments of public and foundation universities in 2008-2009 spring term. In order to evaluate the CEIT departments more effectively, the research was conducted directly on target population instead of a sample. 782 participants responded to the questionnaire, presenting a 68.05% rate of return. The researcher employed ?Individual Innovativeness Profile? questionnaire for gathering data, which also covered Turkish adapted version of Individual Innovativeness Scale (IIS).The findings of the study shows that two thirds of the prospective teachers of CEIT departments exhibit a high or medium level of individual innovativeness whereas the remaining one third displays a low level of individual innovativeness, and 88.60 % could be grouped under the categories that are considered to be good/above average in terms of individual innovativeness, also under the most Early Majority category. According to the findings, openness and willingness to try innovations, and their potential to become the opinion leaders about innovations in the society are found to be the main strengths of the prospective teachers from CEIT departments. However, findings reveal that both risk taking against uncertainties and adjust to changes that innovations bring along are less significant strengths of prospective teachers. In addition, findings also demonstrate significant differences between individual innovativeness levels of prospective teachers and their family incomes; level of technology usage; frequency of technology usage; personal access to technological facilities; membership to social networks, and their perceived innovativeness. Specifically, prospective teachers who are above average users of Wiki, RSS and Podcasting technologies in terms of usage level and frequency, and who own web page, Blog and Wiki technologies exhibit higher levels of individual innovativeness.Finally, the study findings show that prospective teachers from CEIT departments consider institutional circumstances as the main barrier to innovativeness, and perceive quality issues of instruction as a primary barrier to innovativeness. With respect to study results, CEIT departments appear to update their operations in the context of innovativeness from increasing variety of courses to improving the quality of instruction, and from cooperating with Ministry of National Education to participating in social projects. In this regard, further research associating the psychological and sociological dimensions of innovativeness with CEIT departments should be realized, and the results of these studies should be used effectively to contribute to the continuous improvement of CEIT departments