THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS' PERCEIVED IMPORTANCE OF ONLINE TEACHING COMPETENCIES AND THEIR SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS

Online teaching caught in-service teachers off-guard with emergency distance education and sparked interest to teacher education programs. Purpose of this study is to explore self-efficacy beliefs of prospective teachers in teaching online (SETO) and to determine the relationship between pre-service teachers' importance of online teaching competencies (IOTC) perceptions and their SETO beliefs. 101 pre-service teachers were asked to fill faculty readiness to teach online scale and the responses were analyzed through ANOVA and Pearson Correlation. The results showed a significant difference between pre-service teachers' majors, exposure to ICT-related experiences, and their SETO beliefs. In addition, there is a significant relationship between pre-service teachers' IOCT perceptions and SETO beliefs. Understanding the existing SETO beliefs of pre-service teachers is critical because it provides evidence to reassess how pre-service teachers are supported to build their online teaching competencies. The results are expected to make a significant contribution to research on establishing online teaching competencies in Turkiye and assisting teachers in understanding the value of those competencies; as a result, potential implementers may have stronger online teaching self-efficacy in their distance classrooms. The study suggests incorporating technology-based resources into teacher education courses within a digital pedagogy competencies framework to increase pre service teachers' self-efficacy.