Abstract
Teacher training and education is a very difficult and demanding process. Training qualified and elite teachers require even greater efforts. Today, training qualified and elite teachers cannot be achieved only by implementing the curricula to the letter. Curricula must be constantly supported with programs such as high level seminars, symposiums, workshops, etc. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of such activities on the professional development of students. As part of a project called 'Community Leaders Are Coming' (CLC) conducted in cooperation between the Dean's Office of the Faculty of Education of Middle East Technical University (METU) and Cankaya Rotary Club, a series of seminars on education, science, arts, painting, music and sports were held in the past six weeks. In the seminars, 14 high level speakers specialised in their respective areas offered a total of 41 hours training that included visits to historical sites, opera and ballet performances, leadership training and practices. 136 students in the faculty of education joined the project, and 60 of them received a certificate after evaluations. Following the seminars, a 5-point Likert type questionnaire with 30 questions was administered to the participants to assess the project. The Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient for the questionnaire was 0.82. To analyse the data, the study used descriptive statistics, the Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis test. The study found that the prospective teachers achieved significant professional learning outcomes through such activities and hoped that these programs would continue while they all agreed similar programs should be held also for students in other education faculties.
Highlights
Establishing faculties of education were first attempted in Turkey in the 1950s, when Gazi Education Institute was designed to have a new structure to become a faculty of education, and at the same time, a similar approach was adopted in METU (Middle East Technical University), as well
While seminars are given on different subjects/topics in universities where there are faculties of education, it is very important that the support by non-governmental organizations such as Education Reform Initiative (ERG), Çankaya Rotary Club (ÇRK) in terms of social and economic extent for the quality of the seminars and development of abilities and qualifications of the prospective teachers
The highest participation was from Department of Mathematics and Science Education (MSE) with 58.0%
Summary
Establishing faculties of education were first attempted in Turkey in the 1950s, when Gazi Education Institute was designed to have a new structure to become a faculty of education, and at the same time, a similar approach was adopted in METU (Middle East Technical University), as well. Blasé [6], claims that an educational structure made up of monotype students is out of the question since today’s students are going to work in various professions in the future and become doctors, engineers, lawyers, architects, teachers, etc In this respect, he suggests that educating teachers with an approach that they can meet their students’ different needs, interests and expectations is important. These kinds of tasks in education of teachers have played a crucial role in development of teachers’ qualifications [15,16]
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