Educational Technology - Teacher Education
A Ramazani; Z. Talebi
Abstract
Background and Objectives Today, technology has an important role to play in regulating society's lifestyle. People's lives are dominated by an information environment because of rapid technological progress in computers, the Internet, and smartphones. Information and communication technology (ICT) is ...
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Background and Objectives Today, technology has an important role to play in regulating society's lifestyle. People's lives are dominated by an information environment because of rapid technological progress in computers, the Internet, and smartphones. Information and communication technology (ICT) is a special branch of IT facilitating access to information. ICT can help to improve teachers' teaching experiences and prepare them for the demands of the 21st century. To be effective in the use of ICT, teachers are required to have adequate self-efficacy teaching skills. ICT self-efficacy is the concept of an individual's belief that he or she can use information and communication technologies for specific tasks. The skills of information literacy and digital literacy are required for teachers to develop their own ability to use ICT. With this consideration, the relationship between information literacy and digital literacy of preservice teachers and their ability to use ICT for learning purposes is investigated in this study.Materials and Methods: In this study, a survey research design was employed as the methodology. Data were collected using online questionnaires, and the collected data were analyzed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). To gather data for this study, an online survey comprising two questionnaires was administered to students enrolled in teacher training programs at Farhangian University in Zanjan, Iran in 2023. One of the frameworks used as a questionnaire was rigorously developed and validated by Pinto and Markauskaite et al., while the other one was taken from the Global Framework of Reference on Digital Literacy Skills. Participants were chosen from study groups which were selected through stratified cluster sampling. Out of 1700 preservice teachers in two branches of Farhangian University (Alzahra and Shahid Beheshti), 313 preservice teachers were selected as the representatives (which was calculated based on the Morgan Table). To investigate the correlation between latent variables, survey data have been analyzed using CFA. For the evaluation of the proposed framework, structural equation modeling (SEM) was also used.Findings: The outcomes of the CFA and SEM analysis revealed that how pre-service teachers perceive their information literacy directly and positively affects their perception of digital literacy. Additionally, the results showed that pre-service teachers' perceived information literacy has a direct and positive influence on their self-confidence in using ICT for teaching, also known as ICT self-efficacy. Furthermore, the research findings indicated that the way pre-service teachers perceive their digital literacy directly and positively impacts their self-confidence in utilizing ICT for teaching. However, when compared to perceived digital literacy, the perceived information literacy of preservice teachers has a more pronounced effect on their ICT self-efficacy in the context of teaching.Conclusions: The research findings emphasize the importance of giving priority to the development of information literacy and digital literacy skills for pre-service teachers in the field of education. This is because these skills are strongly correlated with higher levels of ICT self-efficacy. The study also underscores the necessity for teacher training and professional development programs that specifically target the enhancement of information literacy and digital literacy. By focusing on these literacies, such programs have the potential to improve preservice teachers' ICT self-efficacy in teaching and enhance the effective utilization of ICT in educational settings.
Educational technology- primary school
F. Gadrdan; B. Sabzeh; Y. Oskoui
Abstract
Background and Objectives: In the digital age, literacy does not only include individual skills, but also includes a set of social actions in real or digital space that uses new and digital technologies to communicate. Therefore, to complete the topic of media literacy, a new type of literacy called ...
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Background and Objectives: In the digital age, literacy does not only include individual skills, but also includes a set of social actions in real or digital space that uses new and digital technologies to communicate. Therefore, to complete the topic of media literacy, a new type of literacy called digital literacy has been proposed. Since students need a complete set of literacy to make the most of social networks, participate in post-industrial economies and play the role of global citizens, digital literacy as one of the new and multi-dimensional literacies is the best and most useful approach to understanding the changing landscape. It is the world that cannot be separated from education and the development of it must be provided among students, especially at the elementary level because childhood learning is the foundation of all subsequent education. In fact, understanding the dimensions and development of digital literacy among students is an answer to face the challenges of the digital age. In this regard, the aim of this research was to identify the dimensions of digital literacy of primary school students.Methods: The current research method was applied in terms of its purpose and its method was combined (qualitative and quantitative) so that in identifying the dimensions of digital literacy of primary school students, a combined research method was used for validation. A descriptive method with Delphi technique was used for the identified dimensions. The statistical population of the qualitative part of this research included all books, articles, master's theses, doctoral theses that were published in the period from 2013 to 2014 on this topic. The digital literacy of primary school students was determined by a statistical sample of 36 documents in a targeted and criteria-oriented way. In the quantitative part, 17 experts were selected as a sample from the statistical community of educational science and educational technology experts and elementary school teachers. In order to collect data and information and analyze the findings to identify the dimensions of students' digital literacy, theoretical coding process was used in three stages of open coding, central coding and selective coding. In this step, to ensure the coding method, in addition to the self-review technique, two experts in the field of digital literacy were used to recode the findings. In order to validate the dimensions identified using the questionnaire made by the researcher, the data obtained from the survey was evaluated with Kendall's formula.Findings: After analyzing the extracted data with MAXQDA11 software, the coding chart was drawn. Based on the results obtained in the coding process, in the open coding stage, 66 codes were extracted, 13 subcategories were obtained in the axial coding stage, and finally, in the selective coding, after combining the concepts, four dimensions were obtained. The results obtained from the research indicated that four operational, critical, cultural and transitional dimensions could be considered for the digital literacy of primary school students and each of these dimensions had components that were appropriate to their age characteristics and needs. Operational dimension included technical literacy, digital content literacy, and information literacy. The critical dimension included the components of media literacy and critical literacy. The cultural dimension included the components of digital participation, social literacy, digital ethics and digital security, and digital creativity and innovation, problem solving, digital entertainment and digital intelligence were components of the critical dimension. In the expert validation section, the value of Kendall's correlation coefficient (0.658) was obtained.Conclusion In this research, the dimensions of digital literacy for primary school students were identified according to their characteristics and needs and based on the study of the experiences of leading countries in the development of digital literacy for children, which showed a balance between protection against online risks and nurturing digital opportunities and it can be a guide for the development of policies and curricula related to digital literacy among Iranian primary school students.
