Technological Pedagogy and Digital Competence in Sustainable Education: Public School Teachers’ Perspectives on Metaverse-Based Educational Practices

In this research, the aim is to examine the views of teachers towards technological pedagogy (techno-pedagogy) and digital competence metaverse-based applications in the context of sustainable education and to reveal how teachers can be supported in this regard. A qualitative research design was adopted. The main purpose of the research is to reveal the views of teachers working in public schools on the integration of metaverse-based technologies, which is an emerging technological trend, into teaching processes. The research has been planned to analyze a need. In this direction, four sub-objectives were determined and seven qualitative questions were prepared to achieve the study objectives. A scale was developed by the researcher and before it was created, the opinions of 12 experts were obtained based on which the final version of the scale to be applied was determined accordingly. The following sub-objectives were determined: (1) to determine teachers’ perceptions and attitudes towards metaverse-based education practices, (2) to reveal their experiences and suggestions on how these technologies can be integrated with sustainable education, (3) to examine the differences in digital competence between disciplines and (4) to define the difficulties faced by teachers in the technology integration process. A total of 92 public school teachers from different disciplines participated. The data were collected online via Google Forms. The obtained data were analyzed via descriptive content analysis using QDA Miner Lite software. The research findings show that teachers generally regard technological developments positively, but they do not have enough knowledge about metaverse-based applications. Additionally, although teachers with sufficient knowledge do believe that these technologies can make a positive contribution, they think there may be problems in terms of technical infrastructure, digital transformation insufficiency and pedagogical adaptation. Therefore, schools should incorporate the integration of such technologies into their education policies and ensure the transformation occurs in a fully structured manner. It has also revealed that the data obtained comply with the sustainability criteria in education and that the education of the future should be in this style.