Graduation Year

2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Curriculum and Instruction

Major Professor

Ilene R. Berson, Ph.D.

Co-Major Professor

Sophia Han, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Michael J. Berson, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Sanghoon Park, Ph.D.

Keywords

teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, teachers’ technology integration, technology in early childhood education, ICT in early childhood education

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore Turkish kindergarten early career stage teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs towards technology and their technology integration practices in their classrooms by answering: What are self-efficacy beliefs of Turkish kindergarten early career stage teachers towards technology? How do Turkish kindergarten early career teachers integrate technology into their classrooms’ instructions? The study was designed as a qualitative multiple case study and guided by Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory and Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) TPACK conceptual framework. I conducted this study in Istanbul, where is the most crowded and metropolitan city in Turkey. The schools were chosen by the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) after the permissions were received from IRB and MoNE, and the participants were assigned by the directors of schools based on research criteria. Participants were chosen purposefully, and there were four female kindergarten teachers in their early career stages, which were identified based on Steffy, Wolfe, Pasch and Enz (2000)’ stages: novice teacher and apprentice teacher, teaching five-year-old students at technologically well-equipped classrooms, and who had a bachelor’s degree in preschool teaching. Data was collected from three sessions of semi-structured interviews and two sessions of observation based on TIM-O. Data was coded and analyzed based on Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) to make sense teachers’ technology self-efficacy beliefs towards technology and Technology Integration Matrix (TIM)’s to understand their technology practice into classroom instructions.

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