Investigation of teachers' critical digital literacy skills in terms of various variables

Uncontrolled dissemination of information has become one of the important problems in today's world where the data piles that emerged with digitalization are increasing rapidly. The literate is expected to have critical skills and digital competencies in order to overcome the problems brought about by the uncontrolled dissemination of information. In this context, critical digital literacy, which is one of the important literacy in the digital age, emerges. The "Critical Digital Literacy Scale (CDLS)" was developed in the study, which started from the theoretical basis of CDL. Four focus group interviews were conducted with 34 teachers during the CDLS development process. The data obtained from these interviews were supported by the literature and an item pool was created. EFA was conducted with 364 teachers and CFA was conducted with 315 teachers. As a result of the analyzes made, a 25-item scale with five factors, namely "Decoding", "Participation-Sharing", "Analysis", "Using" and "Character", emerged. Data were collected from 1075 teachers for CDLS. Analyzes were made and interpreted with ANOVA, independent samples t-test. In the findings of the study, it was concluded that the critical digital literacy skills of the teachers were at a good level. When the results of the research are examined; There was a significant difference in at least one dimension of the CDLS in terms of gender, branch, professional experience, teaching level, daily internet usage time, daily social media usage time and education status to improve digital skills. However, it was concluded that there was no significant difference according to educational status in the general and all sub-dimensions of CDLS. The implications of the study results were discussed together with other studies in the literature, and suggestions were presented for researchers and practitioners. Keywords: Critical literacy, Critical digital literacy, Digital literacy, Scale development, 21st century skills.