An investigation of preschool teachers' epistemological beliefs and digital literacies

The aim of this study is to determine the epistemological beliefs and digital literacy levels of preschool teachers; gender, age, seniority, duration of daily internet and social media usage, for what purpose the internet is used most, trust in the information obtained from the internet and the tool used to follow the news. In addition, it is aimed to reveal to what extent digital literacy predicts epistemological beliefs. Relational screening model was used in this descriptive and cross-sectional quantitative study. The universe of the study consists of 920 pre-school teachers working in kindergartens and primary schools in the central districts of Şanlıurfa (Karaköprü, Haliliye, Eyyübiye). On the other hand, the sample of the study consists of 301 participants, who were reached by the convenience sampling technique from the specified universe. Developed by Ng (2012) as a data collection tool in the study, Hamutoğlu et al. (2017) adapted into Turkish, the "Digital Literacy Scale" and the "Epistemological Belief Scale" developed by Schommer (1990) and adapted into Turkish by Deryakulu and Büyüköztürk (2002) and a personal information form developed by the researcher were used. In the analysis of the study, the level of significance was accepted as p<.05 and "IBM SPSS v26" software was used. Descriptive statistical analysis techniques were used to determine the epistemological beliefs and digital literacy levels of the participants. In order to examine whether the epistemological beliefs and digital literacy levels of the participants differed significantly according to their demographic characteristics, t-test was used for variables with two categories and ANOVA analysis was used for variables with more than two categories. Tukey post hoc test was used to examine between which groups there was a significant difference in ANOVA analysis. The relationships between epistemological belief and digital literacy were examined by Pearson correlation analysis. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine how the digital literacy levels of preschool teachers predicted their epistemological beliefs. According to the results obtained from the study, it was seen that the beliefs of preschool teachers that learning depends on effort are at a high level, their beliefs that learning depends on ability are at a low level, and their beliefs that there is only one truth are at a moderate level. It has been observed that the level of belief that learning depends on talent differs significantly in favor of male participants, and the level of belief that there is only one truth in favor of participants who have a seniority of more than 10 years and use the internet to follow the news. Epistemological belief scale sub-dimensions; it has been observed that there is no significant difference according to age, daily internet usage time, daily social media usage time, trust in information obtained from the internet and the most used tool to follow the news. The digital literacy levels of preschool teachers were found to be very high across the scale and in all sub-dimensions. The digital literacy levels of preschool teachers differed significantly according to the variables of age, seniority, duration of internet use, daily social media use, and purpose of using the internet. There was no significant difference in terms of gender, trust in information obtained from the internet, and the most used tool to follow the news. There was no significant relationship between digital literacy and the belief that learning depends on ability. There was a weak positive and significant relationship between digital literacy and the belief that there is only one truth. There was a moderate positive and significant relationship between digital literacy and the belief that learning depends on effort. In this case, it can be said that as the digital literacy levels of preschool teachers increase, their epistemological beliefs that learning depends on effort also increase in this direction. Due to the relationship between digital literacy level and epistemological beliefs, it is concluded that an individual who is motivated by using interesting technologies will try harder to learn.