Cultivating Digital Pedagogies in the 21st Century: A Quantitative Examination of Pre-Service Teachers’ Capabilities and Readiness

Abstract

In the 21st century, the concept of digital literacy (DL) has become an essential skill set that empowers educators to harness the full potential of technology in the classroom as a crucial element for teaching 21st-century skills (T21C). This study aims to explore pre-service teachers’ level of DL and their capabilities of T21C, and whether their DL level influences their capabilities of T21C. A quantitative research design was employed using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 21.0 to conduct descriptive statistics, reliability and validity analyses, Pearson correlation, and path analysis within a structural equation modeling framework to examine the relationships among variables at a 95% confidence level. The study was conducted on 383 pre-service teachers studying at different faculties of education in Turkiye. The results revealed that the majority of pre-service teachers exhibited a moderate level of DL, but with a smaller proportion falling into the categories of low or high DL. Pre-service teachers’ overall capabilities of T21C were detected as moderate. In contrast, the majority of pre-service teachers had a moderate level of capabilities in utility of technology (UOT), collaboration (CO), and innovation and problem-solving (IP). Still, a smaller proportion was categorized as low or high. The findings also identified a significantly substantial and positive correlation between pre-service teachers’ DL and their capabilities of T21C, which indicates that as their DL levels rose, there was a corresponding tendency towards their enhanced proficiency in T21C, including the constructs of UOT, CO, and IP.

Keywords

• digital literacy
• teaching 21st-century skills
• teacher education
• digital pedagogies
• pre-service teachers

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