The Relationship between the Pre-service Classroom Teachers’ Techno Pedagogical Instructional Competencies and Epistemological Beliefs

Abstract

The purpose of the current study is to determine the relationship between the pre-service classroom teachers’ epistemological beliefs and techno pedagogical subject-area competencies. While the universe of the study is comprised of a total of 187 senior pre-service teachers attending the Department of Classroom Teacher Education in Mugla Sıtkı Kocman University in 2014-2015 academic year, the sampling consists of 141 pre-service teachers selected through the random sampling method from among the universe. The reason for selecting the senior students for the universe of the study was that they had already taken the subject-area, pedagogical and general culture courses. In the collection of the research data, The Techno Pedagogical Competency Scale and Epistemological Belief Scale and a personal information form were used. The data were analyzed by using IBM SPSS 21.0 program package. During the analysis process, first it was tested whether the data display a normal distribution and after it was determined that the data show a normal distribution, from among the descriptive statistics, t-test and one-way ANOVA were used to reveal the differences and Pearson-product Moment Correlation Coefficient analysis was used to elicit the correlations. The analyses revealed that the pre-service classroom teachers’ level of techno pedagogical competencies is high and their level of epistemological beliefs is medium. Gender and academic grade point average were found to be not leading to significant differences in their techno pedagogical subject-area competencies. Moreover, a negative and significant correlation was found between the pre-service classroom teachers’ techno pedagogical subject-area competencies and epistemological beliefs.