INVESTIGATION OF MATH AND PSYCHOLOGY TEACHER CANDIDATES’ OPINIONS ABOUT THE SOCIAL MEDIA USE FOR INSTRUCTIONAL PURPOSES

This qualitative study aimed to investigate Math and Psychology teacher candidates’ opinions about the use of Social Media Environments, namely, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs, for Instructional purposes. These social media environments were selected because they were the most popular ones. 20 math and 22 Psychology teacher candidates were participated to the study. The data were collected through focus group interviews (3 groups of Math teacher candidate and 3 groups of Psychology teacher candidates). Each interviews were lasted about 30 – 35 minutes. According to the results, the all teacher candidate groups were very positive to use Facebook, YouTube, and Blogs use for instructional purposes while they (2 math groups and 2 psychology groups) were mostly positive to use Instagram for instructional purposes. However, out of one math group and one psychology group teacher candidates, other groups were negative to use of Twitter for Instructional purposes. The teacher candidate groups mostly pointed out the reasons of their opinions based on the capabilities and limitations of these environments. The teacher candidate groups mostly stated that they would use these environments for instructional material sharing by creating groups for their classes. The study suggested to provide specific experiences for teacher candidates about the use of social media environments for educational purposes since their views very conservative about just using these environments to share instructional materials