Investigation of Preservice EFL Teacher's Digital Literary Levels and Digital Literacy Skills

ABSTRACT

There has been extensive amount of research in terms of digital literacy and digital literacy education since the notion of embracing digital literacies in teaching contexts to reach the objectives has been highly emphasised within the 21st century teaching contexts. However, a considerable amount of research has been conducted for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers. This study aims to investigate digital literacy levels of pre-semce EFL teachers and also investigates if there are any significant differences of the participants' critical digital literacies in relation to their gender, grade, age, the amount of time they spend online, their beliefs concerning how competent they are while they are using digital technologies and their preferences about reading online or print materials. The study also aims to explore the possible relationships among their subs kills technological skill, personal security skill, critical skill, device security skill, informational skill, and communication skill. This is a cross-sectional quantitative study. The results indicated that the general digital literacy levels of the participants were moderately high (x=3.75). Considering the changes with regard to their demographics, the study showed that their digital literacy levels revealed a significant difference in relation to their gender, grade, and the information they had using digital platforms. However, their digital literacy level did not show a significant difference with regard to the amount of time spent online and their preferences about reading online or print materials. Finally, considering the relationships among their sub-skills also revealed some positive or negative oriented significant relationships. Particularly with the occurrence of the pandemic disease COVID-19, many institutions all around the world have had to reorganise their programs and curricular activities in accordance with distance education to suit all practices to the learners' needs and this dictated an urgent need for the development of the digital skills of teachers to make a smooth transition. Investigating digital literacy levels and lite ray skills of EFL pre-service teachers will enlighten educators in preparing language programs.