Developing an Attitude Scale towards Using Instructional Technologies for Pre-service Teachers

The aim of this study is to develop an attitude scale towards using instructional technologies (USIT) for preservice teachers. The research was carried out with 1235 pre-service teachers that 567(45.9%) were freshman; 401 (32.5%) were sophomore; 151 (12.2%) were junior and 116 (9.4%) were senior students at different universities in Turkey. The study consists of five parts including literature review, item pool, experts’ opinions, administration of scale and computing the reliability and validity. While constituting the item pool, an interview was carried out with 15 pre-service teachers related to instructional technologies. Among from 55 items which are directly related with the subject of attitude or which are selected from the relevant interviews. 45 of them were edited by expert opinions the five point likert type. The draft scale was administered to 1235 pre-service teachers. As a result of factor analysis, the number of items was reduced to 37. After carring out factor analysis the Cronbach-Alpha internal integrity coefficient of the final version of the scale was found as 0.949. By computing the reliability of USIT, the scale was ready to be used. INTRODUCTION Education and technology are two key elements having an important role in human’s life. The aim of the education is to help the people to know and find themselves (Başaran, 1994). Education is not preparation for life, it is the same of life (Varış, 1991). Technology helps individuals to take advantages of their knowledge and skills more effectively and efficiently. Technology is the discipline which consists of gathering machine, process, method, system, management, control system and bridges between science and applications (Alkan, 1998). Nowadays technology has changed and developed quickly and by the way the place of technology in education system has expanded. Thus, using technology in education has become popular field and the field of science has been called ‘Educational Technology’. In literature there are a lot of definitions related to educational technology. Alkan (1998) has described educational technology as a whole system consisted of personnel, instruments and methods in order to apply educational technologies effectively and positively. Besides; educational technologies deals with how they can fulfil these. Teachers’ roles are to create an effective, efficient atmosphere and a multimedia environment with the help of technologies. These environments are important for teacher-student interaction and communication. For this; teacher should use technological materials addressed both eyes and ears in learning and teaching process. Moreover; educational technology examines the reasons of students’ failures, makes analysis and develops the precautions which can increase the success level and deal with the problems of education in rational and scientific way (Koşar et al. 2003). Educational technology and instructional technology sometimes can be used one for another (Yalın, 2004). However; there are differences between educational technology and instructional technology. Educational technology is a process which makes systematic analysis of problems and develops suitable designs by the help of materials, technical, knowledge, manpower to find solutions for these problems. Instructional technology is related to technology, as teaching is sub branch of education and it consists of arranging the disciplines according to specific characteristic, for example; science teaching technology. In other words educational technology emphasizes the discipline of learning-teaching process, on the other hand; instructional technology expresses guidance activity for any subject during teaching (Alkan, 1998). TOJET: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology – January 2012, volume 11 Issue 1