Teacher Education in the Digital Transformation Process in North Cyprus: A Situation Analysis Study

While the world was already moving towards a digital future before 2020, the coronavirus pandemic accelerated that significantly in many sectors. This is certainly true with regard to digital transformation in the classroom, which gathered pace almost overnight when schools shutdown and lessons first moved online. At the time, the shift served to highlight how unprepared most of the sector was for digital transformation. At this point, both teacher and student skills and competencies for digital transformation have been questioned and many academic studies for literature have been put forward in this context. In this research, teacher education and competencies are questioned in the transition to the digital transformation process in Northern Cyprus. In addition, tools for measuring digital competencies and teacher-oriented changes will be introduced. It is thought that determining the competencies of teachers and the tools measuring these competencies within the scope of the digitalization process will be effective in ensuring quality in education on behalf of Northern Cyprus in the future and will shed light on future research. In the literature review, although the existence of studies belonging to Northern Cyprus in measuring the digital competence of teachers/teacher candidates’ is remarkable, it has been determined that there are not enough numbers according to the importance of the subject. Considering the rapid transition and adaptation to the digital transformation process, especially during the pandemic period, since teachers are the most important part of digital education, it is foreseen that more qualitative or quantitative research is needed to interpret and measure digital competencies.