International Journal of Education and Development using ICT

International Journal of Education and Development using ICT > Vol. 11, No. 3 (2015)

Prospective English language teachers’ experiences in Facebook: Adoption, use and educational use in Turkish context

Cem CB Balcikanli, Gazi University, Turkey

Abstract
There has been an increasing attention given to the role of social networking in educational settings. Teacher education is not an exception to this, for teacher education is approaching social media on two fronts: a) application to enhance learning in the process of teacher preparation or professional development b) applications in classrooms where teachers are expected to use social media with learners. The study set out to investigate whether Prospective English Language Teachers’ (PELTs) Facebook adoption processes had an impact on their educational use of Facebook and whether PELTs’ purposes of Facebook use had an impact on the educational use of Facebook. The findings revealed that there was a significant and positive relationship between “Facebook adoption” and “educational use of Facebook”. Likewise, “purposes of Facebook users” were found to be positively associated with “educational use of Facebook”. “Facebook adoption” had a relatively significant effect on “educational use of Facebook”, while “Purposes of Facebook usage” had a relatively low effect on “the educational use of Facebook”. Subsequent to a one semester-experience on Facebook, the student teachers seemed to feel that social networking should be employed in their learning contexts because it offers more interesting learning experiences.

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