Document Type

Article

Date of Original Version

9-8-2015

Department

Communication Studies

Abstract

Educators have a variety of beliefs and attitudes about the best ways to support students' critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration skills by connecting the classroom to contemporary society, mass media and popular culture. Teachers who advance digital and media literacy may have a complex set of attitudes and habits of mind that influence their motivations to use digital media for learning. We conducted a survey research with a sample of 2820 Turkish educators to examine teachers' motivations for digital learning, using a 48‐item Likert scale instrument that assesses teachers' perception of the value and relevance of six conceptual themes, namely: attitudes toward technology tools, genres and formats; message content and quality; community connectedness; texts and audiences; media systems; and learner‐centered focus. Digital learning motivation profiles reveal distinctive identity positions of social science, language arts and information and communication technology (ICT) teachers in Turkey. The most common profiles include the identity positions of “Techie,” “Demystifier” and “Tastemaker.” Statistically significant associations were found between teachers' subject‐area specialization and their digital learning motivation profiles. Professional development programs should assess teachers' digital learning motivation profiles and build learning experiences that expand upon the strengths of teachers' beliefs and the conceptual themes of most importance to them.

A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKVjJfL64ek

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