Digital Literacy and TPACK Levels of Pre-service EFL Teachers

Abstract

Digitalization in education has gained much importance in the 21st century. Digital skills and technological knowledge of both teachers and learners have become a necessity to be able to transfer traditional methods and techniques to technology-enhanced learning environments smoothly. According to Gilster (1997), digital literacy is a cognitive rather than a technical concept that involves being critical and skeptical, as it encompasses the internet as a new medium. There is a requirement to introduce digital literacy to students to be able to make them digital citizens and use technology appropriately not just in formal education but outside of school in their personal lives. Likewise, L2 education makes use of affordances of digital technologies to develop learners’ communicative competence. Moreover, with the sudden integration of technology into education, TPACK (technological pedagogical content knowledge) has gained much popularity. Integrating technology effectively into lessons combined with pedagogical and content knowledge is a significant issue to develop meaningful learning experiences with technology. Teacher education institutions are expected to raise educators who are able to link content, pedagogical, and technological knowledge coordinately and ready to teach students according to norms of 21st century. Thus, research has focused on measuring teachers’ TPACK levels using surveys, interviews, documents, or observations with a range of variables. This review study attempts to analyze studies focusing on the digital literacy and TPACK levels of pre-service EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers’ to portray the pedagogical and research outcomes obtained.