Abstract
<p class="apa">Teaching career is the widest state employment type in Turkey. The career is resourced by many higher education institutions besides the ones deploying regular teacher training programs. Teacher candidates other than the graduates from education faculties have to attend a program specially designed to instruct on foundations of education such as theories, principles, strategies, planning, teaching methods and assessment. That alternative teacher certification program paves the way to transition to teaching career as well. This study was carried out with 11 religious officials who intend to shift into teaching career. The data was collected through 5 essays written by each participant while they were attending the program. The study was conducted as content analyses of total 55 essays. The analyses revealed that the participants, 1 preacher-woman, 4 mosque leaders-preachers and 6 Quran instructors, did not display any role confliction, intended to use their skills and experiences developed through their current careers selectively. The results were discussed with relevant available literature.</p>
Highlights
The obligation to pursue a single career all along one’s working life seems to be a thing of the past
In which teaching career stands on one end, has taken place in two ways so far: (a) civil servants who are employed for their high school attainments could accomplish their higher education in a regular teacher training program and be qualified for transition to teaching profession without taking the public personnel selection examination (PPSE) and (b) individuals who are employed as teachers–mostly class teachers–without attending a teacher training program are eligible to change position from teaching into fields for which they have been trained under suitable conditions
Since the majority of the participants did not volunteer to share their reflections concerning the motives and experiences associated with leaving current career to pursue teaching career, relevant literature was reviewed and lower rank religious officials were found the higher educational backgrounds they had, the more decreased attitudes towards their career they developed and lost their motivation to pursue it (Çoştu, 2013; Kaya and Nazıroğlu, 2008), and certain studies showed that teaching career would be their first choice if they were to change from religious officials (Kaya & Nazıroğlu, 2008; Yıldız, 2012)
Summary
The obligation to pursue a single career all along one’s working life seems to be a thing of the past. In which teaching career stands on one end, has taken place in two ways so far: (a) civil servants who are employed for their high school attainments could accomplish their higher education in a regular teacher training program and be qualified for transition to teaching profession without taking the public personnel selection examination (PPSE) and (b) individuals who are employed as teachers–mostly class teachers–without attending a teacher training program are eligible to change position from teaching into fields for which they have been trained under suitable conditions. Different from the other two types of career change, this type of career changers have to take the PPSE and context with the ones with regular teacher training program in the same field Since they expand the teacher selection pool, they are supposed to have an implicit effect on increasing the teacher quality as well. The study will shed an implicit light on how the religion culture and moral knowledge will probably be constructed in the classrooms by second career teachers
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