The Investigation of Pre-service English Teachers’ Information Searching and Commitment Strategies on the Web

Abstract

This study aims to designate pre-service English teachers’ information searching and commitment strategies on the web. In accordance with the 21st century skills, searching for information on the web has become a vital skill and it cannot simply be taken for granted. In the literature, there are no studies on Turkish pre-service English teachers’ strategies regarding searching information on the web and the commitment strategies they use. Accordingly, quantitative data in the form of a scale are collected from 131 pre-service teachers and a semi-structured interview is used to collect qualitative data from 16 (out of the 131) pre-service teachers studying English language teaching at a state university in Sakarya, Turkey. This study has a mixed method design and The Scale for Web Information Searching and Commitment Strategies which was developed by Wu and Tsai (2005) and adapted into Turkish by Geçer and ?ra (2014) has been used as a collection tool for the quantitative part and a semi-structured interview developed by the researchers has been undertaken to obtain qualitative data and improve the validity and reliability of the study. The findings suggest that pre-service English teachers in this context have a high level of competence (at I agree level) in four of the factors and they have a medium level competence in “technical properties and visuality” and “using a single source” factors. As for the effects of the variables, daily internet use and the sources used to acquire knowledge are observed to have no significant effect. However, gender (only on “checking formal and expert websites”) and grade (on “checking formal and expert websites” and “the appropriateness of the content for the goals”) are observed to have a significant effect. This study has implications for information searching and commitment strategies on the web, pre-service teachers and their use of technology for pedagogic purposes.