Öğretmen Adaylarının Öğretmenlik Mesleğine Yönelik Tutumlarının Çeşitli Değişkenler Açısından İncelenmesi

Abstract

Background. It can be assumed that the first step to train qualified teachers is to select those candidates who are willing and enthusiastic to become teachers. Therefore, it is essential to examine the attitudes of the prospective teachers towards teaching profession and to take necessary actions to develop their attitudes in the light of the findings. Factors affecting the attitudes towards teaching profession are examined in terms of gender, the programs prospective teachers are enrolled in, the grade they attend, and the reasons why they choose teaching as the profession. Purpose. This study aims to examine the relationship between the attitudes of prospective teachers studying at Ataturk Teacher's Academy (ATA) towards the profession of teaching and their academic achievement (AB) by gender, reasons for choosing teaching profession, the programs prospective teachers are enrolled in and the grade they attend. In addition, the study also aims to explore the correlation between the scores of the attitudes of prospective teachers towards teaching profession and the scores of their AB. Method. The descriptive research method was used in this study. 208 student teachers enrolled at ATA during 2008-09 academic year participated in the study. Since these were the student teachers making up the whole population, no sampling was adopted for this purpose. Attitudes towards the Teaching Profession of the student teachers in this study were measured by a scale developed by Erkus at all. (2001). The academic achievement scores of the student teachers were gathered from the Registrar's office at ATA. The Cronbach Alpha value of the scale was found to be 0.95. SPSS 13.0 were used for the analysis of the data. Means, percentage, frequency, ANOVA, Bonferroni test and correlation techniques were used for data analysis. Findings and discussions. The scores of the attitudes of the prospective teachers towards the profession of teaching studying at ATA were at a relatively high level ( =94.73), and their scores of AB were above the moderate level ( =3.10). There was no significant correlation between the scores of the attitudes of the prospective teachers towards the profession of teaching and their AB (r= .12, p=.085). However, there was a significant difference in the scores of AB by gender, in favor of female prospective teachers (t=9.95, p=.000). But it was found that Attitudes toward the Teaching Profession scores showed no significant difference in terms of the gender (t=1.76, p=.080). In terms of the programs the prospective teachers were enrolled, there was a significant difference in favor of the prospective teachers studying in the preschool teacher education program (PTEP) (t=4.11, p=.000). In terms of AB, no significant difference was found between the scores of the two groups enrolled in two different programs (t=.28, p=.776). The scores of the attitudes of the prospective teachers towards the profession of teaching showed a difference in terms of the reasons for choosing the teaching profession variable (F=41.56, p=.000).). However, there was no significant difference between the scores of the attitudes of the prospective teachers towards the profession of teaching and their AB (F=1.334, p=.797). The scores of the prospective teachers who have chosen the teaching profession with regard to qthe willingness towards becoming a teacherq is higher than the scores of the prospective teachers who have chosen the profession of teaching due to the reasons for “job security and working conditions” and “parent effects”. Moreover, despite that the ATTP scores of the student teachers enrolled at ATA based on the lparent effect' were the lowest; their AB scores were found to be the highest. The scores of the attitudes of the prospective teachers towards the profession of teaching showed no significant difference in terms of the grade variable. However, the AB of the prospective teachers showed a significant difference in terms of the grade variable (F=8.292, p=.000). The AB of the prospective teachers seemed to increase at 3rd and 4th grades compared to the other grade levels (F=1.221, p=.303). The ATTP scores of all prospective teachers at the Ataturk Teacher's Academy were found relatively high. The female prospective teachers were more successful than the male prospective teachers academically. This may be explained as the studying strategies of the female prospective teachers are better than the male prospective teachers and also the programs of the AOA is mostly based on the cognitive objectives. The scores of the prospective teachers attending the classroom teacher education program (CTEP) were found higher than the student teachers attending the PTEP. Since the affective abilities of the prospective teachers at the CTEP were weaker than their cognitive abilities it might have affected the scores of ATTP in a negative way, comparing to the prospective teachers at the PTEP. It can be stated the most important factor for prospective teachers in choosing their profession is their ldesire'to become a teacher. There was no significant relation between the ATTP scores and AB scores of prospective teachers. It can be said that this result is not much surprising, since the ATTP is mostly affective and the AB is mostly cognitive.