Factors affecting perceived technology proficiency of Turkish teachers of English in the light of 21st century learning

The 21st century has brought many changes and innovations into our lives. Smartphones, 3D painting, augmented/virtual reality, online shopping, social networking sites, cloud computing, social robots, drone technology, wearable technology, artificial intelligence, big data, etc. are just to name a few. They are becoming parts of our lives at varying rates, and changing our settled habits. This change is also affecting teaching and learning practices. Therefore, the actors in these environments, namely learners, teachers, administrators, policymakers, related institutions, have had to work tremendously to integrate these changes into their practices, which requires competence in technological devices and applications. The present study aims to discover how Turkish teachers of English are doing in this process, and to find out if such variables as their sex, age, what level they teach, whether they teach at a private or state institution, how long they have been teaching, and the duration of time they spend in electronic environments affect their perceived technology proficiency. iv Survey research method was adopted in this study. Data collection was performed through the Technology Proficiency Self-Assessment Questionnaire for 21st Century Learning (TPSA C-21) (Christensen & Knezek, 2017), which is designed in a 5-point Likert scale. Before answering the questionnaire, the 273 participants were asked their sex, age, what level they teach, whether they teach at a private or state institution, how long they have been teaching, and how much time they spend in electronic environments. The participants were reached through convenience sampling method, and they were asked to share the questionnaire with their colleagues, which is an example of snowball sampling method. Independent-samples t-tests and ANOVA tests were performed on SPSS 22 for the analysis of the collected data. The findings reveal that the participants' gender, age, years of teaching experience and what level they teach do not affect their perceived technology proficiency while how much time they spend in electronic environments and whether they teach at a public or private school do. Key Words: Digital competence, technology integration, technology proficiency, technology self-efficacy, Turkish teachers of English