Evaluation of Turkish prospective teachers’ attitudes towards teaching profession (Near East University case)

One of the important factors that affect a teacher's success and efficiency is his/her attitude towards the profession. For the realization of an efficient / active mother tongue teaching, mother tongue teachers need to have a positive attitude towards he profession. The fundamental objective of this study is to determine the mother tongue (Turkish) prospective teachers’ attitudes towards the teaching profession according to their “genders”, “classes” and “socio-economic” levels, their reasons for choosing this profession, what the problems they may confront when they start the profession are and whether the education they received is sufficient. The study is built with a structure suitable for combined approach where qualitative and quantitative analysis methods will be used together. The study group of the research consists of students (n= 117) that are students at the first, second, third and fourth classes at Near East University Faculty of Education Department of Turkish Language Teaching in 2008-2009 Academic Year Fall Semester and that are selected by use of random sampling method. In order to evaluate prospective teachers’ attitudes towards teaching profession, 5-point Likert-type attitude scale (Cronbach alpha value α=0.95) developed by Çetin in 2006 was used. The qualitative data in the study was collected using four open ended questions. For the analysis of the data, t-test and descriptive analysis methods were used. A significant difference occurred in favor of female prospective teachers in relation to the gender factor. No significant difference between attitude scores was observed in relation to the effects of class and socio-economic level. The majority of prospective teachers chose Turkish language teaching because they love the profession. The prospective teachers’ most important concern about their future is “not being appointed”. The prospective teachers think that there are some deficiencies in the education they receive.