Exploring the Digital Literacy of Digital Natives: A Pilot Study of Preservice Teachers

Abstract

The decline in pedagogical technology training in teacher education programs is at least partly attributable to the idea that current students are “digital natives’, fluent in the use of technology because they have grown up in a global environment infused with it. However, little research has been done on preservice teachers to determine the validity of this paradigm. Clarifying the veracity of the idea of “digital natives” and digital literacy of teacher trainees is critically important as deficiencies in both/either undermine the education of future generations of schoolchildren. This pilot project involving 44 students in a teacher education program in the USA was designed to determine whether broader investigation into the digital literacy of preservice teachers was warranted. A survey examining nine different areas of digital literacy was used to assess participants’ perceptions of their abilities and experiences with technology. Descriptive date (means; frequencies) were used to characterize differences across the sample. Results found notable heterogeneity across multiple dimensions of digital literacy, indicating the concept of digital native may be problematic. This indicates the need for a larger follow-up study to confirm these initial findings and identify potential remedies for digital literacy deficiencies in preservice teachers.