Investigation of pre-service physical education teachers attitudes towards computer technologies (Case of Turkey)

Abstract

Elicitation of pre-service physical education teachers' attitudes towards computer technologies seems to be of great importance to satisfy the conditions to be met for the conscious and effective use of the technologies required by the age to be used in educational settings. In this respect, the purpose of the present study is to investigate pre-service physical education teachers' attitudes towards computer technologies and the relationship between these attitudes and some variables. The study was conducted with the participation of 5120 students from 49 different universities of Turkey offering education in the field of Physical Education and Sports in their Schools of Physical Education and Sports in 2010-2011 academic year. In the study designed in the survey model, an Information form developed by the researcher to get information about the demographics of the participants and Computer Technologies Attitude Scale developed by Pala (2006) were used as data collection instruments. The reliability of the scale was calculated with Cronbach alpha coefficient and found to be 0.87. At the end of the study, it was concluded that the pre-service teachers' attitudes towards computer technologies are positive. Moreover, it was found that these attitudes change depending on the duration of computer possession and level of computer use but do not change depending on having a personal computer and frequency of computer use.