A STUDY ON PROSPECTIVE SCIENCE TEACHERS’ INFORMATION LITERACY LEVELS AND PERCEPTIONS ON ONLINE RESEARCH AND INQUIRY SKILLS
Tez Türü: Yüksek Lisans
Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Türkiye
Tez Danışmanı: Prof. Dr. Mustafa Sami Topçu
Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2022
Tezin Dili: İngilizce
Özet:
The 21st century experienced an information
explosion, and it is called as Information Age by authorities. Intense share
and production of information became possible through advances in communication
technologies. Especially, Internet is one of them and used by so many
individuals all over the world. It includes information from all disciplines,
and it is possible to reach those information by networks that are independent
from time and place. It serves people a freedom to reach any type of
information they wish. The internet is a frequently used tool for science
teaching. However, there is no sufficient control mechanism in information
sources on the internet. Thus, individuals become vulnerable to incorrect
information and misunderstandings. At this point, information literacy skills,
online research skills and perceptions towards online information gain
importance. For this reason, this study aims to investigate prospective science
teachers’ information literacy levels and their research and inquiry skills
perceptions towards the internet which is used much in science classes
according to different variables because information communication technologies
are used a lot in science classes. Moreover, it is aimed to examine the
correlation between information literacy levels and research and inquiry skills
perceptions towards Internet of prospective science teachers.
The sample of the study consisted of 474 prospective
science teachers. During 2020-2021 fall term from 13 different universities in
Türkiye. Freshmen, sophomore, junior and senior preservice science teachers
participated in the study. Data
collection tools were Information Literacy Scale and Research and Inquiry
Skills Perception Scale Towards Internet. Additionally, some demographic
information questions were asked to participants. Collection of the data was
made through an online platform. In this study, relational screening model that
is one of the quantitative research methods used to examine the correlation
between prospective science teachers’ information literacy levels and research
and inquiry skills perceptions towards internet. After data collection process,
by SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), descriptive statistics,
ANOVA (Analysis of Variance), Pearson correlation coefficient were applied.
According to results of the study, prospective science teachers’ main purpose
for internet use found as social media, their daily time spent on the internet
is about 3-5 hours in a day. Their most used information source is online
sources. Their levels on information literacy and research and inquiry skills
perceptions towards internet is high. A positive moderate relation found
between the means of information literacy and research and inquiry skills
perception towards internet.
Key words: Information
literacy, prospective science teachers, internet, science teaching, online
research and inquiry skills.