Identifying The Relationship Of Teacher Candidates' Humor Styles With Anxiety And Self-Compassion Levels

Abstract

Problem Statement: Teacher candidates who will soon be responsible for educating the future generations should possess certain characteristics. Specific teacher candidates should have specific characteristics taken into consideration: pre-school and primary teacher candidates should be seen as role models by younger students; psychological counseling and guidance teacher candidates should guide students in terms of choice of profession and provide counseling in case of problems; and special education teacher candidates should be fully equipped with the skills to handle students with special needs and characteristics. Purpose of Study: This study aims to identify the relationship between teacher candidates' humor styles, anxiety, and self-compassion levels, and to investigate these levels from the perspective of gender and grade variables. Method: In this research study, a multiple regression analysis was applied in order to explore the relationship between candidate teachers' humor styles and their anxiety as well as self-compassion levels. The sample of the study is comprised of a total of 1008 students studying in the following departments of the Ataturk Education Faculty at Marmara University: early childhood education, primary school teaching, psychological counseling and guidance, and special education. As data collection instruments, the Self-Compassion Scale, the Humor Styles Questionnaire, and the State and Trait Anxiety Scale were used. Findings and Results: According to the findings of the study, the t values calculated to find the significance of the regression coefficients indicate that isolation and selfjudgment sub-dimensions have significant predictiveness for affiliated humor. Selfkindness, common humanity, isolation, and over-identification sub-dimensions have significant predictiveness for self-enhancing humor. Self-kindness, self-judgment, mindfulness, and over-identification subdimensions have significant predictiveness for aggressive humor. Self-judgment and common humanity sub-dimensions have significant predictiveness for self-defeating humor. Other sub-dimensions do not have significant influence on the dependent variable. Finally, the sub-dimensions of