Assessing pre-service english as a foreign language teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge

Abstract

The present research aimed to assess pre-service English as a foreign language teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge. A total of 76 undergraduate students enrolled in an English language teaching (ELT) program at a major state university in Turkey were recruited in the study and were asked to anonymously complete the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Scale and answered some open-ended questions. The findings revealed a highly developed knowledge of TPACK (Mean > 3.5; 81%). Gender differences were found to be significant with respect to Technological Knowledge (TK) and Pedagogical Knowledge (PK) dimensions with females proportionally having higher TPACK development. The findings of qualitative data analysis also revealed that compared with cooperating teachers, faculty members in the department used more TPACK in a classroom lesson. Thus, these findings contribute to understanding the nature and development of TPACK based instruction among pre-service English teachers, suggesting that the integration of content, pedagogy and technological knowledge into the existing teacher education paradigm and fostering technologically-rich environment for language learners will contribute to quality learning and teaching.