Abstract
The ongoing changes in history education in support of diversity have an effect on Turkey even if on a limited scale. Although the current history curriculum in Turkey promotes the identity transmission instead of respecting different identities, it also has some goals such as “teaching the students about basic values including peace, tolerance, mutual understanding, democracy, and human rights, and making them sensitive about maintaining and improving these values”, which is compatible with the contemporary understanding of history education. However, it must be noted that the attitudes and perceptions of teachers are as important as their presence in curriculum in terms of reaching the aims of history education. The aim of this study was to reveal preservice history teachers’ attitudes towards identity differences. Identity Attitudes Scale (IAS), which was developed by Yazici (2016) to measure the attitudes towards identity differences, was conducted on 314 preservice history teachers. Preservice teachers’ attitudes towards identity differences in terms of gender, and their ethnic, religious and political identities were examined using t-test and one-way variance analysis. As a result, it was found that the variables had effect on preservice teachers’ attitudes at varying rates.
Highlights
As a part of the social and political change since the World War II, the concepts of identity and diversity have become the focus of politics as a result of globalization and demands for local/cultural rights
Identity debates through ethnic and cultural diversity has led the concept of identity to become one of the primary research fields of social sciences since the beginning of 1990s
One-way variance analysis was performed in order to reveal whether the participants’ attitudes towards identity differences differed in terms of the region of their university
Summary
As a part of the social and political change since the World War II, the concepts of identity and diversity have become the focus of politics as a result of globalization and demands for local/cultural rights. Hall and Gieben (1991) state that identity is “too complex, too under-developed, and too little understanding in contemporary social science to be definitely tested” This is because “identity is an ever changing concept and it is constantly being shaped and conditioned by the environment and culture one is born into, which means one’s identity is not fixed at any time in any circumstances” (Ang, 2001). Despite the difficulty in defining the term, identity can be interpreted as “who we are”, including education that we have received, culture that we have been taught, and society that we have lived in, which has an important role in the development of our identity. In this social world, individuals’ identities play key roles in their development and formation of relationships with themselves and with others (Idrus & Nazri, 2016)
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