A Review of Arabic Teacher Candidates’ Profiles

Abstract

Although the history of training foreign language teachers in Turkey dates back to the Tanzimat period until the 19th century, in the first years, the French teacher was trained in the last years. Arabic, on the other hand, has been perceived as a religious language rather than a foreign language for a long time, and this perception has not changed completely even today. Perhaps because of this perception, the first program to train Arabic teachers within the higher education system was established in 1984. Sixteen years after the establishment of the first Department of Arabic Language Education established at Gazi University, departments to train Arabic teachers in both private/foundation and public universities began to open. In this study, the profiles of a total of eight hundred and forty-three teacher candidates who settled in the Arabic teaching program at eight universities between 2019, 2020 and 2021 were examined from various angles. At the end of the study, Arabic teaching was preferred by female students, teacher candidates came from different cities in state universities, they came from the same city in private/foundation universities, Arabic teacher candidates preferred the Marmara Region the most, about seven out of ten teacher candidates graduated from Imam-Hatip High School, almost none of the teacher high school graduates preferred Arabic teaching, and the teacher candidates did not prefer Arabic teaching. In the eighty-question foreign language test, it was concluded that they made an average of forty-five nets, and that Arabic teacher candidates preferred English-related departments the most after Arabic. As a result of the study, some recommendations were made to teacher training programs for innovations in the student selection system by associating them with the relevant literature findings.