Analyzing Teaching Beliefs of Pre-service and Cooperating Preschool Teachers in Turkish Context.

Author(s):

Abdülkadir Kabadayi

Conference:

ECER 2008

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 02B, Research on Believes and Understanding of Teaching and Learning in Teacher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2008-09-10

11:15-12:45

Room:

A1 334

Chair:

Kennert Orlenius

Contribution

It is not clear what the source of the beliefs which cooperating teachers and teacher candidates bring to teacher education might be -a product of their upbringing, a reflection of their life experiences, or a result of socialization processes in schools. Building upon existing literature, and utilizing recent data the present study was aimed at investigating the characteristics and beliefs of teacher candidates entering preschool teacher education and those currently working in Turkey since the kinds of beliefs that pre-service and practising teachers bring to the teacher education course provide a context to discuss ways to enhance the learning in preschool settings in different socio-cultural context.

Method

A questionnaire consisting of fixed-response, Likert-style and open-ended questions was administered to all entry level preschool pre-bachelor, bachelor student teachers enrolled in the Vocational school of Social Sciences(n=120) and Faculty of Education of Selcuk University (107) and cooperating teachers (n=90) currently working in Konya to obtain information about their background characteristics, reasons for choosing preschool teaching as a career, and perceptions of preschool teaching as a profession. In the process of analyzing data, descriptive statistics including frequency distribution, percentile and statistical analysis are used to report the data obtained via open-ended questions and Likert-style items. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedure was used to determine the difference among the pre-bachelor, bachelor and cooperating teachers.

Expected Outcomes

Results indicate that significant differences exist between pre-service (pre-bachelor and bachelor) and cooperating preschool teachers’ preconceptions of the teaching profession regarding, their reasons for choosing preschool teaching as a career, and perceptions of preschool teaching as a profession.. The study showed that pre-bachelor student teachers stated that they had 68% intrinsic, 23% altruistic, and 9% extrinsic reasons for the preschool entry level. As for the bachelor student teachers, they mentioned that they had 40% intrinsic, 28% altruistic, 28% extrinsic and 5% other reasons in choosing the preschool career. Regarding practising teachers, they exposed that they had 51% intrinsic, 23% altruistic, 17% extrinsic and 9% other reasons of entering the preschool career. With respect to pre-service and practising preschool teachers, a multitude questions warrant further research by using the scales in question as research tools, for example: (1) Is there a difference between male and female pre-service and practising preschool teachers’ preconceptions of teaching profession? (2) Do the job satisfaction of cooperating teachers affect their preconceptions of teaching profession? (3) Is there a difference between the pre-service and practising preschool teachers from different socio-economical strata regarding perceptions and preconceptions of teaching profession (4) Is there a difference between the pre-service and / or practising preschool teachers who had preschool education and the ones who did not in perceptions of teaching? There is much to learn about pre-service student and practising teachers with regard to their beliefs and perceptions of choosing the profession.

References

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Author Information

Abdülkadir Kabadayi

Selcuk University

Faculty of Education Elementary Dept.

KONYA

212

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