What do Turkish primary teachers think about integration of Web 2.0 literacy tools in primary schools during covid 19?

Abstract

This study aims to understand the Turkish primary teachers' use of Web 2.0 tools when teaching literacy in the Turkish language. The data were collected from 33 teachers teaching in public and private primary schools across Turkey. Teachers were selected using a criterion sampling method and interviewed using a semi-structured interview form and their responses were analyzed using content analysis. Research results show that Web 2.0 tools are useful in terms of increasing students’ motivation towards lessons and ensuring active learning to occur. The opinions expressed by the participants have revealed that Web 2.0 tools are used for evaluation, reinforcement, revision and teaching grammar subjects and that many of them prefer to use Web 2.0 tools after explaining the subject. While the participating teachers mentioned the concretization of concepts and subjects through digitalization for primary school students and increasing classroom interaction in the category of contributions to educational processes while the problems experienced in the use of these tools were expressed to be the absence of Turkish language option in these tools and difficulty in having access to these tools. In addition, teachers’ inadequacies in using Web 2.0 tools were also expressed as a problem. As solutions to the problems experienced, they stated that the language barrier problem can be overcome by using alternative Web2.0 tools, that the use of Web 2.0 can be made more widespread among teachers through in-service trainings and works can be conducted by the Ministry of National Education of Turkey to provide better opportunities for teachers to have access to technology and internet. In light of the findings of the study, concrete suggestions were made to teachers on how to use these tools in language teaching and suggestions were made to the software developers to design these tools in different languages.