The relationship between primary school teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge and their digital literacy proficiencies

The rapid change and development in technology affects social life in many ways. One of them is education. In line with this effect, new teaching tools and new teaching methods have been used in the education. For this reason, new competencies that should be found in 21st century teachers have emerged. In order not to have problems in the process of integration of technology into education, teachers should have certain technological competencies and be able to use these competencies in the field of education. When the general qualifications of the teaching profession published by the Ministry of National Education are examined, it is seen that technology literacy and the use of technology in education, frequently included. In this study, primary school teachers' "Digital Literacy" levels, which indicate their levels of technology use in daily life, and "Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge" which is the integration of technology into education, were measured and the relationship between them was determined. In this direction, it is aimed to determine the relationship between the daily technological levels of primary school teachers and the technological levels expected to be used during education. In the study, which aims to examine the relationship between these two variables, the relational survey model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used. Relational screening models are the research models aiming to determine the presence and/or level of change between two or more variables and to specift the relationships between the variables. The study group of the research consists of 259 primary school teachers working in Kocaeli, Turkey in the 2020-2021 academic year. Data were collected witch the "Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) Scale" adapted by Öztürk and Horzum (2011), and the "Digital Literacy Assessment Scale" developed by Acar (2015). In this study, "convenience sampling method", which is one of the qualitative research design was used. After reaching the descriptive statistics of the obtained data, a correlation analysis was made between digital literacy scores and technological pedagogical content knowledge scores. As a result of the research, it was determined that 73% of the participants were fully competent in the field of digital literacy, and 20.1% were very competent. When the technological pedagogical content knowledge competencies were examined, it was determined that 73.7% of the participants were at a very good level and 20.8% at a good level. According to these results, it can be said that the technological pedagogical content knowledge and digital literacy proficiencies of the participants are at a high level. At the same time, a high level positive correlation was found between the technological pedagogical content knowledge levels of the participants and their digital literacy levels (r=.77, p<.01). In line with these results, it can be suggested that primary school teachers receive in service training in the field of digital literacy in order to facilitate the process of integrating technology into the education field.