Investigation of Pre-service Social Studies Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Perception of and Attitudes Towards the Profession of Teaching

Nur İkbal Yıldız,Feti Çelik,Harun Şahin

doi:10.5430/jct.v9n2p47

Abstract

The current study aimed to investigate pre-service social studies teachers’ self-efficacy perception of their ability to teach geography and attitudes towards the profession of teaching in relation to the variables of gender and university attended. The study is a descriptive study employing the survey model. The research sample was determined from the universities, where there were two public universities represented from each of the seven geographical regions, and a fourth-year student of social studies teaching in the spring semester of the 2017-2018 academic year. The study was carried out with the participation of 654 pre-service social studies teachers from 14 different universities across Turkey. In order to collect data, “The Geography Teaching Self-Efficacy Scale” and “The Scale of Attitudes towards the Profession of Teaching” were used. In the analysis of the collected data, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, independent samples t-test and one-way variance analysis (ANOVA) were used. According to the findings of the current study, self-efficacy perceptions related to geography teaching and their attitudes towards the profession are high. The mean scores taken from the whole self-efficacy perception scale and its sub-dimensions were found to be not varying significantly depending on the gender variable while they were found to be varying significantly depending on the variable of the university attended. On the other hand, the attitudes towards the profession of teaching were found to be varying significantly depending on both of the variables.

Highlights

The aim of education and training is to provide learning
When the pre-service social studies teachers’ mean attitude scores were investigated on the basis of the university attended, it was found that the highest mean attitude score was taken by the pre-service teachers attending Atatürk University (X =141.42), while the lowest mean attitude score was taken by the pre-service teachers attending Dokuz Eylül University (X =111.11)
It has been determined that the pre-service teachers' perception of self-efficacy regarding geography teaching is high

Summary

Introduction

The person providing the education in the institutions providing formal education is the teacher (Erden, 2007). Many factors such as education program, quality of teaching materials, physical environment and technological infrastructure are effective in reaching the aims of the education system. In the Basic Law of National Education, teaching is defined as “a specialist profession that assumes the state's education, training and related management duties” (TBMM Legislation, 2019). The teachers who undertake this task and the candidates who have taken steps in this path must bear the duties and responsibilities of the teaching profession. There are professional knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that must be possessed in order to fulfil duties and responsibilities specific to the profession. The competences that the teachers and prospective teachers think of the competences mentioned have the same concept of “self-efficacy”

Methods

Results

Conclusion