Awareness and Access of Open Access Resources by Teacher Educators and Student Teachers: Potential for Reflection

Open access resources are considered to be the most valuable assets in the field of teaching, learning and research. Like other disciplines, the usage of open access resources by teacher educators and student teachers can be highly useful in teacher education. For this, it is expected from the teacher educators and student teachers that they must be acquainted of/with open access resources and know to access these resources. This study is, therefore, intended to explore the awareness of teacher educators and student teachers about the open access resources and to find out the extent to which teacher educators and student teachers access these resources. This study was descriptive in nature, the teacher educators and the student teachers at the Department of Education, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan served as a case. The population of the study was all regular teacher educators of the department and student teachers enrolled in B.Ed. (Hons.) and MA Education. Of 10 teacher educators, eight participated in study. Using cluster sampling, four classes were randomly selected as a sample out of six, representative of both programs. Of these four classes, 151 student teachers were selected as a sample. For collection of data, a questionnaire was developed, with Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient value of 0.84. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. It was concluded that majority of the teacher educators consider internet resources specifically HEC- Journals as an open access resource while majority of the student teachers consider books and internet as an open access resource. Teacher educators use internet to prepare their lectures, research and reflection while student teachers mostly use books as open access resource to prepare assigned tasks. It is recommended that an orientation about the use of open access resources may be the part of programs in teacher education departments.