Perception of Prospective Teachers’ Competencies about Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

In recent years, importance of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is gradually increasing day by day in many fields of area. In addition, one of the major areas affected by technology is education. Using ICT in education are indispensable tools such as computers, internet, projectors etc. for successful teaching and learning that the level of teachers‟ ICT competence directly affects the quality of education. (Akgül, Küpeli, & Kır, 2015) . In this context, investigation of teachers‟ ICT competence level is great importance for increasing quality of education. The purpose of this study is to research the general competencies of prospective teachers‟ perceptions within the context of teaching profession about information and communication technologies (ICT). Furthermore, it was targeted to compare the differences between perception of prospective teachers‟ ICT competency levels and some variables which are, gender, grade, department, nationality, frequency of internet usage, computer-related courses receive status, ownership of personal computers, and purpose of using computer and internet. The study group consisted of 718 prospective teachers in 12 different programs in Eastern Mediterranean University in 2015-2016 fall academic year. In addition, 5-point Likert scale was used to collect data with 30 items, which was “Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Efficacy Scale for Prospective Teachers”. It was developed by Şad & Nalçacı (2015) based on performance indicators for teaching profession, which was published in Turkey by The Ministry of National Education. The findings indicated that in general, perceptions of prospective teachers‟ competencies about ICT was adequate level. Correlation analysis has identified significant differences in ownership of personal computers and purpose of using computer and internet variables, whereas there were no differences in terms of grade, gender, department, nationality, computer-related courses receive and frequency of internet usage. Keywords: Prospective teachers, educational technology, perception of ICT competency, teacher competencies, information technology literacy