Philosophy Group Teacher Candidates’ Preferences with Regard to Educational Philosophies of Teaching and Learning Activities

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine philosophy group teacher candidates’ educational philosophies about teaching and learning activities. The sample of the research is constituted by, 149 female and 30 male, in total 179 philosophy group candidates who were selected randomly among the active students during 2011-2012 academic year in a state university education department pedagogical training program. Based on the survey methodology, study was done by using “Educational Beliefs Scale” as the data collection tool. In this survey there are 40 Likert style items aiming to determine teachers’ adopted educational beliefs. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of internal consistency of the scale were tested between 0.70-0.91 for sub scales and reliability coefficient was ranging between 0.69-0.86 in lower dimensions. During data analysis, descriptive statistics and t-test were used. According to the results, philosophy group teacher candidate were adopted the Existentialist philosophy the most while they adopted the Essentialist philosophy the least. While there were no differences among teacher candidates adopted educational philosophies in terms of gender and educational status variables, except Essentialism female teacher candidates score higher than male teacher candidates in the remaining dimensions. Graduates on the other hand adopted Progressivism and Reconstructionist educational philosophies more than the others. When teacher candidates adopted philosophies compared there were a low positive correlation between Existentialism and Perennialism, a low negative correlation between Essentialism and Progressivism, a high positive cor relation between Existentialism and Progressivism, and a moderate positive correlation between Progressivism and Reconstructionist.