Investigation of prospective teachers' ability to plan effective technology integration in education

The study aimed to develop and apply a template and rubric for determining the level of technology integration in education. They study employed the survey design, one of the quantitative research methods. Selected using the criterion sampling method, the study group consisted of 64 4th-year pre-service teachers enrolled in different departments at Niğde Ömer Halisdemir University's Faculty of Education. Developed by the researcher line with the study purpose, the "Technology Enriched Lesson Plan Template" and the "Rubric" were used as data collection tools. During the validity stage of the development of the data collection tools, opinions were taken from 12 experts from different fields, and content validity rates and indices were calculated. In the reliability of the data collection tools, the content validity index was found as .92, inter rater agreement as .91 and Cronbach's alpha value as ,762. In the implementation phase, in order to reach the participants in the ample group, first, the course programs and the dates of the Teaching Practice course in each department, and the staff giving the courses were checked from the university website. Each participant group was informed about the study and the instructions on how to fill data collection tool were explained. Non-parametric tests were used in data analysis. The study results revealed that the technology integration levels of Social Studies, Science, and Turkish pre-service teachers were found "low", whereas the technology integration levels of mathematics pre-service teachers were "medium". In addition, there was no statistically significant difference between the technology integration levels of the participants in terms of their majors. The lesson plans developed by the pre-service teachers showed that they had important shortcomings in key areas of the teaching process such as teaching methods and techniques, learning objective of their subject matter, activity planning and evaluation. Therefore, it can be recommended that training should be specifically focused on pedagogy and field knowledge in pre-service teachers' education before they embark on their profession. Furthermore, it is believed that the use of the developed "Technology Enriched Lesson Plan Template" and "Rubric" in in-service trainings carried out within the Ministry of National Education and in teacher training programs in higher education institutions will contribute to the increase in teacher quality.