Identifying Turkish Pre-Service Teachers' Attitudes Toward Teaching Profession

Abstract

This study attempts to identify attitudes of Turkish pre-service teachers' attitudes toward teaching profession. Data was obtained from 195 last grade students in the Department of Turkish Education, in Dokuz Eylul University. The tool that was used for data collection is called Attitude Scale Towards Teaching. ANOVA and t-test were employed to analyze the data. The findings have indicated that variebles such as the gender and preference arrangement in OSS proved to be significant on the attitudes of the students, whereas, variables such as the type of high school and existence of a teacher in the family had no impact. SUMMARY Purpose and Significance: Since the teachers have major role in developing learning materials, preparing learning process and identifying interests and competence of students, they are milestones of the education in every country. All their duties require professional knowledge. In adition the teachers should have a positive attitude toward teaching profession. It is believed that positive and negative attitudes of teachers have proportional reflections in the classroom. Because of this fact, the goal of our study was to find out the Turkish pre-service teachers' attitudes towards teaching profession. Furthermore, this study tried to reveal whether there is any relationship between students' attitudes in terms of following variables: gender, the type of high school graduated from, preference arrangement in OSS (University Entrance Examination), and having a teacher as a family member. Methods: 195 teacher candidates, 67 males and 128 females were participated in the study. They were senior students in Department of Turkish Education at the Faculty of Education of Dokuz Eylul University. A likert scale developed by Erkus and et al. (2000) with 23 items utilized in the study. The internal consistence coefficient of the scale is 0.99. Cronbach Alpha coefficient was found to be 0.95. SPSS 11.0 Statistical Program was used to analyze the data. Data were analyzed through ANOVA and t- test. Results: Statistical analysis showed that attitudes of pre-service teachers towards teaching were positive. It was seen that there were significant differences between groups in terms of gender and preference arrangement in OSS. However, there had not been found any significant difference with respect to the type of high school graduated from and the existence of a teacher in the family. Discussion and Conclusions: Based on the findings of the current study and related literature, it can be concluded that pre-service attitudes of teachers' towards teaching profession were positive. The possible reasons includes the fact that teaching profession is considered prestigious in Turkish Society, and that it provides good job opportunities. Regarding gender, it showed the female teachers had more positive attitudes than male colleague. The general belief that teaching profession is considered as a female profession may have contributed to the difference between genders. The other conclusion showed that candidates who had chosen teaching study in their first five preferences in OSS had more positive attitudes than others. Based on this finding, it can be concluded that those students had put the study of teaching in their university preferences because of their positive attitudes. There had not been any significant difference with respect to the type of the high school graduated from. However, since the students graduated from Anatolian Teacher Training High School had taken teacher training (pedagogical) courses, it had been expected that they would show more positive attitudes than students coming from other high schools. The last variable of the study indicated that existence of a teacher in the family did not have any significant difference on the attitudes of the students towards teaching profession. It can be therefore concluded that pre-service education in Turkish Language Department had positive impact on students, who have not any teacher in their family.