Podcasting in pre-service language teacher education: A constructivist perspective

This study aims to investigate the perceptions of pre-service English language teachers towards the use of podcasts. In addition, it surveys to what extent pre-service language teachers use Web 2 tools in their academic lives as well as personal lives and their views on the benefits and possible drawbacks of podcasts. For this reason, Teaching Language Skills Course specifically for the third year pre-service teachers is blended with podcasting in a web based platform. Twenty-two pre-service teachers who take the course constitute the working group. A web site is designed solely for the participants of the course and empowers them to listen to and download podcasts, do the tasks related, make reflections and view other learners' work. The theoretical background of this specific study is based on social constructivism. Here in this study, a collaborative learning environment is provided. Combining both qualitative and quantitative research methods, a mixed method research design is used. Questionnaire, face to face interviews and pre-service language teachers' reflections are conducted in order to ensure triangulation. The questionnaire and face to face interviews are held at the beginning and at the end of the course and results are compared to see if there is a significant change. Results show that participants have a positive view of podcasts in general and have a tendency to use the podcasts in their following teaching career. Each learner's weekly performance on the tasks related with the podcasts is also analysed according to the descriptive statistics. It is concluded that learners' performances on tasks are rapidly increasing which points out that after the adaptation period and learners get familiar with the podcasts their performance level increased. Keywords: Podcasts, blended learning, language skills, social constructivism, pre-service language teacher education.