Predictors of preschool teachers' self-efficacy beliefs: Attitudes towards the use of technological equipment and perceptions of information technologies self-efficacy

As the education system has changed, the roles of teachers have been stripped of their traditional perceptions and replaced by role models and guides. For this reason, teachers' self-efficacy beliefs have gained more importance. In the study, teachers' attitudes towards the use of technological equipment and their self-efficacy perceptions regarding information technologies were examined as variables affecting the self-efficacy perception of teachers working in pre-school education institutions. Relational survey model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The study group consisted of 200 preschool teachers working in private and public institutions in the 2021-2022 academic year. "Personal Information Form", "Preschool Teachers' Self-Efficacy Beliefs Scale", "Attitude Scale Towards the Use of Technological Tools" and "Teachers' Information Technologies Self-Efficacy Scale" were used as data collection tools. In the analysis of data; In addition to descriptive statistics, difference statistics were also used. Preschool teachers' self-efficacy beliefs and attitudes towards the use of technological tools and equipment, regression analysis in predicting teachers' information technology self-efficacy perceptions, independent groups t-test and one-way analysis of variance were applied to look at the difference between teachers' self-efficacy perceptions according to demographic characteristics. As a result of the analysis, it was found that 39% of preschool teachers the self-efficacy beliefs can be explained by their attitudes towards the use of technological equipment and teachers' information technology self-efficacy perceptions. A significant difference was found in the self-efficacy beliefs of preschool teachers according to age, gender, marital status, having children, years of work in the profession, and age group. However, it has been observed that there is no significant difference according to the place they live, the institution they work in and the number of children in their class.