Impact of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Based Education Applications on Prospective Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Belief Levels Toward Science Education

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of technological pedagogical content knowledge-based education applications on prospective teachers’ self-efficacy belief levels toward science education. The study was conducted on the 3rd year prospective science teachers of a public university and continued for 14 weeks. In the study, quasi -experimental method, pretest-posttest experimental design with a control group. The research was performed in the Instructional Technologies and Material Design courses during the education year of 2015-2016. In the research, one of the classes of the 3rd years was determined as a control and another one as an experimental group. There were 65 students (control=33, experiment=32) in the study group. As the instrument of data collection, the self-efficacy belief levels toward science education scale was used and the scale was applied as pretest, posttest and follow-up test. Cronbach Alpha (a) consistency coefficient of the scale is 0.82. To the students in the experimental group, the education applications based on Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge were introduced by the researcher; the courses were made with these applications and they were requested to use these applications that they learned in the materials that they were making. As for the control group, the courses were made with the current curriculum. The research results show that the self-efficacy belief levels of prospective science teachers toward science education design is higher in the experimental group than the students in the control group.