Developing and changing rapidly, technology today has become an essential need for the people of information age (Akkoyunlu, 2002). In the 21st century – the age of information and technology – the developments in information and communication technologies have affected social life politically, culturally, economically and socially (Erkoç & and Erkoç, 2011). Communication has played a key role especially in the educational life and most people have been reported to widely use technology resources for communication purposes (Yalcin, 2012).   

Of these developments occurring in the field of information and communication, the internet technology definitely is the most important one (Yaman & and ErdoÄŸan, 2007). A large number of people have started  to benefittaking  the advantages of  from??? the internet since access to the internet has become easier, cheaper and naturally more common. They can access to the information and make the best of various services on the internet.  

The ongoing developments, transformations and the opportunities provided by the internet have affected the communication channels, socialization mediums of individuals and the areas of online interaction among people, and particularly the young ones. Changing into a leading and a preferred environment for the social interaction, communication and information, the internet has been increasingly involved in the lives of communities (Gemmill and Peterson, 2006; Wang et al., , Moon, Kwon, Evans and Stefanone, 2010).  

Today   also known as the information age, educational  environments cannot any longer be considered independent of technology, and the developing technological resources, leading to changes in the scope of education environments, have necessitated that educational institutions need to keep up with the timeschanging technology. Individuals around the world keep in touch by means of network-based technologies, and using the internet (world wide web) they can communicate with each other as a part of a network (Ekici and Kıyıcı, 2012).  

The internet has entered a new era with the Web 2.0 applications that connect people to each other and facilitate access to information (Warschauer, 2009). Social networks are considered an important component of Web 2.0 technology and one of the most popular social sharing sites (Karal and Kokoç, 2010).      

Social networking sites, having a central place in the internet use (Aksüt et al., 2012), represent another type of reality occurring  community formation on the internet, which allows users to share their opinions in the direction of a common goal and facilities their interaction with each other. Social networking sites have replaced face-to-face commu-nication,  with the online one, and people started to leave their traditional way of commuting.  schoolmates, friends in the neighbourhood or workmates with those of the virtual world. Social networks have certainly played the key part in shaping how individuals communicate and form social groups (Erkoç and Erkoç, 2011).       

Social networks are the websites that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, share a connection and view their list of connections and those made by others in the system; these are also the places where people in the online communities share their likes and activities and send each other messages, e-mails and videos, join discussion groups and live chats and do file sharing (Boyd & and Ellison, 2007).  

First appeared with Classmates (1995) and SixDegrees (1997), social networking sites have continued their development along with sites such as Ryze (2001), Friendster (2002), Hi5 and MySpace (2003), Bebo (2005), Facebook (2006) and Twitter (2008), all of which have new and unique designs and functions (Boyd and Ellison, 2007; Kim et al., Jeong and Lee, 2010)

Among all these, The most commonly used social networking tools and their percentage of use are as follows: Facebook 92%, Twitter 84%,  LinkedIn 71%, Blogs 68%, YouTube 56%, Social BookMarking 26%, Forums 24%, Foursquare 17%, Myspace 6% (Saravanakumar and Sugantha-Lakshmi, 2012).

Among the most well-known are LinkedIn.com, which mainly addresses business life, MySpace.com, a tool with a focus on romantic relationships and Facebook.com mostly preferred by university students (Ellison et al. 2007). 

Facebook is referred to as the most popular platform which is preferred by university students as a social networking site and connected and visited by an increasing number of university students (Genç, 2010; Kabilan, Ahmad and Abidin, 2010; Lampe, Ellison and Steinfield, 2006; Socialbakers, 2011). Facebook is anthe leading online social sharing software through which young people can easily express themselves and it is mainly used by these young people to find friends (Kobak and & Biçer, 2008), meet new people and make contact with others (Ellison et al., 2006). Facebook provides electronic data that allows young people to socially interact in a quick, com-prehensive, dynamic and enjoyable manner (Golder et al., 2007). Therefore,        

Sseveral studies performed on university students in Turkey revealed that Facebook , among others, is the most commonly used one (Öztürk and Akgün, 2012;Genç, 2010;  Göker, Demir and DoÄŸan, 2010; Genç, 2010Öztürk and Akgün, 2012) with a higher frequency of use (Göker et al., 2010; Ä°ÅŸman and HamutoÄŸlu, 2013; Öztürk and Akgün, 2012; Göker, Demir and DoÄŸan, 2010)   Ä°ÅŸman and HamutoÄŸlu, 2013). 

Turkey  is  ranked in the  5th  rank in  the  world in terms  of  the number of total Facebook users. In 2008, there were 3.464.640 Facebook users, and only after three years later in 2011, thise number grew up to 29.,459,.200 (Nickburcher, 2011). It is seen that the number of Facebook quadrupled in 4 years.          

Numerous features of Facebook could be the reason behind such a high rate of preference, including providing users with a rich variety of multimedia; easy sharing via other websites; the chance of making contact with large communities by offering options such as group, activity and practices; online and offline chat; an infrastructure that supports mobile devices to run various games; rich visual contents; and the language support for Turkish (Karademir and Alper, 2011)

Blackey and Chew (2009) reported the benefitsthe advantages of social networks for higher education students, academic staff, and teaching members and institutions in order to enrich support learning and teaching experiences Gülbahar et al., KalelioÄŸlu and Madran  (2010) suggest that compared to other learning management systems, social networking sites are easier to use as they are flexible and user friendly. To communicate and get feedback, they provide great convenience to students and researchers as these networking sites let them create a group by following some easy steps and share things among themselves. 

Facebook help students get in touch with each other and ask and discuss about the lessons. Thanks to Facebook, educators can create groups specific to their own courses, add anyone to this group and check what is shared. Thus, students use the site to study in a controlled way, reach out and enhance the interaction with other members, share educational information and materials and make announcements about lessons. Creating a link, educators can also help students get a quick access to other educational software programs.                  

Along with their various aspects, social networking sites have both positive and negative impacts (Kabilan, Ahmad and Abidin, 2010). It is critical to determine the intended uses of social networking sites for the research studies that will focus on the negative and positive effects of these sites and the reasons underlying these effects (Brandtzæg and Heim, 2009).   

Facebook receives a great deal of attention from university students as it is free and used by lots of people so the use of Facebook in the higher education has become a need that should be fulfilled in certain situations. This software encourages cooperative learning due to an increased student to content, student to student and student to teacher interaction (Kalafat and GöktaÅŸ, 2011). Such networking sites bring a new dimension to interpersonal communication in the academic environments (Yu et al., 2010). Moreover, knowledge about the reasons for using social networking sites is believed to guide researchers who want to use them for educational purposes since they are regarded as a pedagogical tool stimulating cooperative learning (Lee and McLoughlin, 2008; Lockyer and Patterson, 2008). 

In this senseWithin this context, the purpose of this study is to determine how PE teacher candidates use Facebook to establish and improve their social relations, and also to find out their views and opinions about the role of Facebook in the educational domainprocess.

Research design

The present study was planned and performed based on general survey methodology (Karasar, 2009; Büyüköztürk et al, , Çakmak, Akgün, Karadeniz and Demirel, 2010; Karasar, 2009) in order tto determine Facebook connection styles of PE teacher candidates and find out their views and opinions on the use of Facebook in the educational processdomain. 

Research data was collected using Facebook Connection Styles Scale (FCSS) and the data was evaluated using SPSS statistical package programme.

Participants

The participants were composed of rised 626 PE teacher candidates; covering  232 (37.1%) females and 394 (62.9%) males, selected randomly from first to fourth year grade students attending Physical Education and Sports Teaching departments in at five different universities in Turkey (namely Gazi University, Kirikkale University, Bartin University, Sakarya University, and Selcuk University) during 2014-2015 academic year. year. Out of these 626 PE teacher candidates, 136 (21.7%) were first-year studentsears, 193 (30.8%) were second-year studentsears, 135 (21.6%) were third-year yearstudents, and 162 (25.9%) of them were in their last yearthe fourth and last year students at the university (Table 1).

Data collection instruments 

Two instruments were used to collect data about the participants; “Personal Data Form” and “Facebook Connection Styles Scale”. 

Personal Data Form: This form was developed by the researcher himself  to  collect  data   on   the   demographics   of    PE   teacher candidates. Previous research studies were reviewed and expert views were sought to develop the form.   

Facebook Connection Styles Scale

Turkish validity and reliability of the “Facebook Connection Strategies Scale”, originally developed by Ellison et al. , Steinfield and Lampe (2011), was adopted to Turkish performed by Aktürk et al. , Çelik, Åžahin and Deniz (2014). The scale, designed as a 5-point Likert-Type Scale, includes 13 items and three subscales; termed  “initiating, information seeking, and maintaining”.  

The first 9 items of the scale have response options as “not likely at all, not likely, not sure, likely and very likely” and the last 4 items requires selecting one of five possible answers - “strongly disagree, disagree, not sure, agree, strongly agree”. The internal consistency coefficients for the subscales are as follows: 0.82 (information-seeking), 0.89 (maintaining), 0.80 (initiating). The analysis performed showed that the Turkish version of the scale was valid and reliable.  

Data analysis

Independent variables of the study included gender, frequency of Facebook use, the number of people in the friend list and whether the  people  in  the  friend  list  exist  in  the  social circle. “Facebook connection styles (FCS)” was defined as the only dependent variable in the study. The statistical analysis of the data was designed in a way to discover the effects of independent variables on the dependent variable. The distributions of the scores derived from the scale were transferred to the computer by coding them according to the independent variables.       

Research data were analysed using SPSS 17.0. For the personal data, statistical values such as percentage and frequency were used to analyze the data concerning PE teacher candidates. Facebook connection styles were determined using the statistical techniques of “arithmetic mean” and “standard deviation”.     

Independent samples t-test was performed to find out if there were any differences between the variables with twoof the groups. And the differences between the variables with multiple groups were tested using the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). A Tukey post hoc test was conducted to ascertain the source of the difference. For the statistical analyses, the level of significance was set at 0.05.

This section of the study presents the interpretations of and Interpretations the findings related toof the research problem.. 

Table 2 shows the mean scores of PE teacher candidates obtained from each subscale of FCSS and from their total scale scores. PE teacher candidates obtained a mean score of M= 3.10 on the initiating dimension and M= 2.94 and M= 2.79 on the maintaining and information-seeking dimensions respectively. The mean total FCSS score was M= 2.95. 

A t-test was performed in order to compare the FCSS mean scores by gender. The results are presented in Table 3. 

The mean scores that PE teacher candidates obtained on each subscale of FCSS and on the entire scale were compared by the gender variable and the comparison results were presented in Table 3. FCSS means of PE teacher candidates indicated a significant difference in favor of male teacher candidates (p<0.05).  

The study also examined the connection styles of PE teacher candidates by comparing how often they connect to Facebook. The findings are shown in Table 4.  

Table 4 shows the results of one-way ANOVA which was performed to compare the Facebook connection styles of teacher candidates by the frequency of Facebook use. The results revealed significant differences in the Facebook connection styles of PE teacher candidates (p< 0.05). Those who connect “more than once a day”, “once a day” and “every few days” achieved higher mean scores compared to ones connecting “once a week”.

The number of people in the friend list was another variable measured using one-way analysis of variance to compare the Facebook connection styles of PE teacher candidates. The results of the comparison are given in Table 5.   

Facebook connection styles of PE teacher candidates were compared in terms of the number of people in their friend list. The results can be seen in Table 5. According to these results obtained in Table 5, significant differences were observed in terms of the number of people in the friend list of PE teacher candidates

This section presents the study results in relation to the Facebook connection styles of PE teacher candidates and the comparisons of the connection styles in terms of gender, year in school, frequency of Facebook connection, the number of people in the friend list and whether the people in  the  friend  list  exist  in  the  social circle. These findings were discussed in line with the relevant literature. 

The mean scores of PE teacher candidates provided by the subscales and the entire scale demonstrated that PE teacher candidates achieved the highest mean score on the subscale of “initiating”. Also, it was seen that PE teacher candidates had lower mean scores on the subscale of “information-seeking” when compared to those obtained from the subscales of “initiating” and “maintaining” and also from the entire scale. The total mean score on the FCSS might suggest that Facebook connection styles of PE teacher candidates differed to some extent. Based on the scores PE teacher candidates obtained from the subscale of initiating, it could be argued that PE teacher candidates adopt behaviours that aim to meet new people or strangers, communicate and make friends with them. A similar result reported by Ellison  et   al.  (2011)  suggested  that  Facebook  covers many features that can be used to create new contacts as well as strengthen the existing social ties. In sa similar study, Aksüt et al. (2012) emphasized “making friends” as the primary purpose of using Facebook among primary and secondary school students. Another study conducted by Åžener (2009) revealed that communicating with friends was the main reason underlying Facebook use, followed by tracking down the friends and acquaintances and sharing favourite videos and photos. It is suggested that users use Facebook is mainly used to share their favourite videos/ photos because it gives them a chance to get to know each other better. Engin and Sarsar (2015) reported that technology and media tools are not efficiently used in a goal-oriented way. They stated that teacher candidates spend considerable time—as much as 6 hours or more each day – watching TV or using the internet and they use the social media tools such as Facebook and Instagram just as to know about the lives of others in their immediate environment and share photos of foods and drinks.    

The data came resulting from the subscale of initiating indicated that PE teacher candidates use Facebook mostly for meeting new and different people as well as searching for close friends, adding as a friend, making contact and meeting. It could also be suggested that Facebook is used least for searching for someone they meet in their social life and getting more information about the classmates and those living in the vicinity. 

The study found that the comparisons between the FCSS scores of PE teachers and the variable of gender yielded significant differences. This finding suggests that Facebook connection styles, in other words the purposes of using Facebook, are different among male and female PE teacher candidates.   

Erkoç and Erkoç (2011) reported that the majority of female and male students (84.37% and 93,88%) use Facebook to message each other. It was also underlined that a great proportion of male students use Facebook to play games in comparison with the females. It is noteworthy that male students much prefer Facebook to find their friends. In general, it could be asserted that males and females prefer to use Facebook for different purposes. This finding seems to be in agreement with the one reported in this study.      

 Another result revealed in the present study is related to the frequency of Facebook use and Facebook connection styles of PE teacher candidates. The result showed that there were significant differences in the Facebook connection styles of PE teacher candidates in terms of frequency of their Facebook use. PE teacher candidates who use Facebook “more than once a day”, “once a day” and every few days” had higher mean scores than those who use it “once a week”. Therefore, it might be suggested that teacher candidates using Facebook less often display different connection styles.  

Torlak ve Ay (2015) discovered reported in a study that 71.7% of the individuals login to their in their research sample log in Facebook account more than once aevery day. In addition, it was underlined stressed that individuals in the research sample spend approximately 2 h and 40 min on average on Facebook. Another study conducted by Göker et al. , Demir and DoÄŸan (2010) asked questions about the patterns of internet use and a large number of participants reported that they go online and take a look at their Facebook pages once a day at least. Accordingly, it is clear that the frequency of Facebook use seems really high. Based on the finding reported in the present study, it could be argued that frequency of Facebook use among PE teacher candidates is influential in their Facebook connection styles; in other words, it diversifies their Facebook connection styles.  

There were also differences observed in the Facebook connection styles of PE teacher candidates in respect of the number of people in the friend list. Teacher candidates with who have lessfewer people in  friends their friend list conveyed exhibited lower Facebook connection styles compared to those who have more friends. Thus, it can be said that an increase in the number of people in the friend list or having a lot of friends in the list makes differences in the Facebook connection styles. Åžener (2009) emphasized that increased number of Facebook friends leads to spending more time on Facebook. Also, another study (Öztürk and Akgün, 2012) reported that the average number of people on social networks is 246, which seems consistent with the result found in the present study.       

Given that the number of people in the friend list actually mirrors the social circle of a person, a long list crowded with contacts is considered a privilege. Nevertheless, having a great number of people in the friend list is not enough to assume that the person maintains an active relationship with all the people in the list.  This might be said to affect Facebook connection styles. Another study found the number of friends one of the major indicators for the Facebook activity. The more friends the user havehas, the more messages s/he receives and therefore the more people s/he shares the messages with. So, it was reported that the activity of Facebook use of a Facebook user changes mostly based on the number of friends (Göker et al., 2010).       

The study finally compared Facebook connection styles of PE teacher candidates in connection with the variable of whether the people in the friend list are also in their own social circle. A significant difference was found in favor of those who have more people in their friend list. 

Regarding the people in the friend list, PE teacher candidates who reported “more than half, almost all and all of them are in my social circle” had higher mean scores than those who responded “almost most of them are not in my social circle”. Consequently, it might be asserted that differences arise in the connection styles as fewer people in the friend list exist in the social circle of the teacher candidates, or, in other words, as the gap widens between the number of virtual friends and the friends in the real world. The social transformation triggered by the advanced communication  technology (Uslu and Karahan, 2007) has changed how individuals of the society communicate and build a social circle (Erkoç & and Erkoç, 2011). Göker et al. , Demir and DoÄŸan (2010) considered it important whether the Facebook friendships have a connection to the social circle and found that a considerable number of university students in their study sample reported that people in their friend list were also a part of their social circle. This is in line with the result of the present study. Moreover, they came to the conclusion that social ties are strengthened when the people in the friend list come from their social circle.   

Facebook connection styles of PE teacher candidates were determined in the present study.  Over and above this, Facebook connection styles were investigated in view of the variables of gender, frequency of Facebook use, the number of people in the friend list and whether the people in the friend list exist in their own social circle, all which are considered potentially influential in Facebook connection styles. Results of the study point to the conclusion that PE teacher candidates use Facebook commonly and also for different purposes as evidenced by the different Facebook connection styles of PE teacher candidates. Further research should be conducted to explore Facebook connection styles of PE teacher candidates using larger samples and different variables.

The author has not declared any conflicts of interest.