Subjective well-being (SWB) is defined as people's evaluations of their lives (Diener, 2000). To be more exact, SWB is about having a good mental state, including positive and negative inferences of what people experience daily and how they react. Subjective well-being is examined under two domains as cognitive and affective. The cognitive domain involves satisfaction with life because self-evaluation tests one's satisfaction; it is considered a cognitive domain. On the other hand, positive affect and negative affect is stated as affective domain, and they indicate the pleasant and unpleasant feelings people experience (Diener, 2000; Viac & Fraser, 2020; Schimmack, 2008). Subjective well-being is closely related to mental and physical health, and it is an essential parameter in each stage of life (Eryılmaz & Sapsağlam, 2018) as an element of quality of life (OECD, 2013). .Examination of subjective well-being and contributing factors is a research area among sociologists and researchers on life quality. Their findings reveal the role of personality on SWB and demographic characteristics, i.e., income and marriage (Diener, Oishi, & Lucas, 2003).  

According to the psychodynamic theory of personality, one's identity has a powerful impact on one's behavior, thoughts, and feelings (Chang, 2011). In this regard, people's identity is a source for explaining their level of subjective well-being. Likewise to SWB, several personality traits are significant to contribute to the development of a sense of identity. Identity is a resource that helps people to describe and justify themselves towards themselves, others, and worldwide networking. Lounsbury and colleagues (2007) state that college experiences are a crucial period for identity development.  At that point, the teacher education period for teacher candidates plays a significant role in the construction of a professional identity or early teacher identity of teacher candidates. There is a need for describing the term to be more exact; a teachers' professional identity can be defined as a teachers' perception of their replacement in life to themselves and others (Arpacı & Bardakçı, 2015). Teachers' professional identities significantly influence their decision-making processes, professional lives, and motivations, so being aware of their professional identity is essential for teachers (Wu & Garza, 2016). As stated by Babanoğlu and Ağçam (2019), teacher's professional identity development bases on the teacher education process, so the scope of teacher identity for teacher candidates has a remarkable value in terms of their future profession (Arpacı & Bardakçı, 2015; Nickel & Zimmer, 2019). Similarly, teacher candidates' subjective well-being is also a significant part of teacher candidates' development because it is required to consider how the process affects them as well as how they run teaching activities (Hall-Kenyon, Bullough, MacKay, & Marshall, 2014). From an in-class perspective, well-being is crucial, having a direct impact on classroom climate, teacher-child relations, and, of course, quality of education (Viac & Fraser, 2020; Jeon, Buettner, & Grant, 2018).

Likewise, the longitudinal research with teacher candidates revealed the role of teacher education in professional identity development for pre-service teachers (Nickel & Zimmer, 2019). Furthermore, a teacher’s subjective well-being impacts a teacher’s mental and physical status and social and emotional status (Jeon, Buettner, & Grant, 2018). In the light of these studies, examining the relationship between teachers’ subjective well-being and their early teachers becomes significant to finding suggestions for raising more-qualified teachers. In this regard, a teacher’s subjective well-being as a parameter for personal development and early teacher identity as a parameter for professional development are hypothesized as related to each other. This study aims to examine early childhood teacher candidates’ subjective well-being and early teacher identity to promote the multidimensional development of teacher candidates.

The previous study aims to examine teacher candidates’ early teacher identity and subjective well-being. The survey design is used, one of the quantitative methods for the study. By considering the pandemic process and coronavirus measures, the survey is applied online. The study population includes early childhood teacher candidates who are studying at faculties of education in Turkey. Participants are selected with convenience sampling were invited via e-mail and social media to participate in the study. Three different scales for data collection are used following the purpose of the research. One of them is the Early Teacher Identity Measure (ETIM), developed by Frisen and Besley (2013) to measure early teacher identity for teacher candidates. The adaptation and validity studies are done by Arpacı and Bardakçı (2015). The scale is a 5-point likert scale with 17 items. Two scales were applied to measure subjective well-being based on Diener’s (2000) descriptions of subjective well-being. The Positive and Negative Affect Scale, developed by Watson, Clark, and Tellegen (1988), is a 7-point likert scale with ten positive and ten negative emotions. The scale, adapted by Sümer (1999) into Turkish, is used to measure positive and negative effects. Besides, Life with Satisfaction Scale (Sümer, 1996) is used to measure participants’ satisfaction levels with nine items.

The study is ongoing, so the expected results are presented. Subjective well-being as an indicator of participants' mental, emotional and social status aims to describe teacher candidates' self-development as a human being. On the other hand, early teacher identity is associated with how teacher candidates replace them towards themselves and others. The presence of a relationship between subjective well-being and early teacher identity is expected. In this regard, examining the relationship between two parameters will help make a linkage between personal and professional development while promoting teacher candidates' multidimensional development.

Arpacı, D., & Bardakçı, M. (2015). Adaptation of Early Teacher Identity into Turkish. Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences, 14(3), 687-719. Babanoğlu, M. P., & Ağçam, R. (2019). Turish EFL Teacher Candidates Early Teacher Identity. Asian Journal of Education and Training, 5(2), 386-391. Bay, D. N. (2016). The Question Asking Skills of Preschool Teacher Candidates: Turkey and America Example. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 4(1), 161-169. Beauchamp, C., & Thomas, L. (2009). Understanding teacher identity: an overview of issues in the literature and implications for teacher education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 39(2), 175-189. Chang, W.-C. (2011). Identity, Gender, and Subjective Well-Being. Review of Social Economy, 69(1), 97-121. Diener, E. (2000). Subjective well-being: The Science of happiness and a proposal for national ındex. American Psychologist, 55(1), 34-43. Diener, E., Oishi, S., & Lucas, E. R. (2003). Personality, culture, and subjective well-being: Emotional and cognitive evaluations of life. Annuan Review of Psychology, 54(1), 403-425. Eryılmaz, A., & Sapsağlam, Ö. (2018). Development of Subjective Well-Being Increasing Strategies Scale for Children (1-5 ages) Their Mother Use. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 6(6), 77-83. Green, Z. A. (2020). The mediating efect of well being between generalized self-efficacy and vocational identity. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 20, 215-241. Hall-Kenyon, K. M., Bullough, R. V., MacKay, K. L., & Marshall, E. E. (2014). Preschool Teacher Well-Being: A Review of Literature. Early Childhood Education Journal, 42, 153-162. Jeon, L., Buettner, C. K., & Grant, A. A. (2018). Early Childhood Teachers’ Psychological Well-Being: Exploring Potential Predictors of Depression, Stress, and Emotional Exhaustion. Early Education and Development, 29(1), 53-69. Lounsbury, J. W., Levy, J. J., Leong, F. T., & Gibson, L. W. (2007). Identity and Personality: The Big Five and Narrow Personality Traits in Relation to Sense of Identity. Identity, 7(1), 51-70. Nickel, J., & Zimmer, J. (2019). Professional identity in graduating teacher candidates. Teaching Education, 30(2), 145-159. OECD. (2013). OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being. OECD Publishing. doi:https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264191655-en Schimmack, U. (2008). The Structure of Subjective Well-Being. In M. Eid, & R. J. Larsen (Eds.), The Science of Subjective Well-Being (pp. 97-123). NewYork: The Guilford Press. Viac, C., & Fraser, P. (2020, January 27). Teachers' well-being: A framework for data collection and analysis. OECD Education Working Paper No.213. Wu, H.-P., & Garza, E. (2016). Pre-service Bilingual/ESL Teacher Identity from a Sociocultural Perspective. Journal of Teacher Education and Educators, 5(2), 171-191.