Pre-Service Teachers' Teaching Reading Efficacy Beliefs, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) Levels, and their Teacher Educators' Modeling

Abstract

Preparing efficacious literacy teachers for technology-enhanced instruction is beginning to become a main concern for many teacher education institutions. With the emerging technologies coming into the landscape, pre-service teachers and teacher preparation programs are challenged to embrace the opportunities in improving the teaching-learning process along the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) Framework. This study investigated the relationships among the pre-service teachers' perceived teaching reading efficacy beliefs, TPCK levels, and teacher educators' TPCK modeling. A descriptive survey method with focus on quantitative data collection and analysis was adapted. Forty-seven respondents were lottery drawn from 157 graduating pre-service teachers of Bachelor of Elementary Education at the Philippine Normal University Lopez, Quezon campus. Three self-report Likert type instruments were employed for self-assessment of the respondents' teaching reading efficacy beliefs, TPCK levels and their teacher educators' TPCK modeling. Findings reveal that the pre-service teachers maintain a high sense of efficacy in teaching reading and very good TPCK levels. The pre-service teachers report that their university-based teacher educators have high competence and oftentimes model TPC in the classroom while their cooperating teachers have shown some competence and sometimes demonstrate TPCK in their student teaching program. Using the Pearson r .05 level of significance, it was established that moderate but statistically significant relationship existed between teaching reading efficacy beliefs and pre-service teachers' TPK and PCK levels. There is no significant relationship between efficacy beliefs and teacher educators' TPCK modeling. Although there is no significant relationship existing between the pre-service teachers' TPCK levels and the Grade I to 6 cooperating teachers' TPCK Modeling, significantly strong positive relationship, as a whole, has been found between TPCK levels of pre-service teachers and their university-based teacher educators' TPCK modeling. Implications germane to the transformational leadership of school administrators and teacher educators in the 21* century educational paradigm are forwarded.