The Attitudes of Prospective Teachers Towards the Profession of Teaching (The Case of Inonu University, Faculty of Education)

Abstract

This study intends to determine the attitudes of the students in the faculty of education towards profession of teaching. To this end, it is questioned whether “the attitudes of students towards the profession of teaching differ according to the variables including their gender, the type of the department/program they study, the order of the program in the UEE (University Entrance Examination) preference list, the socio-economic status (SES) of the neighborhood and family they live in, the grade they attend, type of schooling, and the reasons for choosing teaching profession”. The participants of the study comprise 593 students who are selected using rated cluster sampling method for the departments and rated element sampling method for the classes. All of the prospective teachers participating this study were administered the instrument for data collection. The instrument used to collect data in this study was the “Attitude Scale towards the Profession of Teaching”, a single-dimension Likert type scale with 5 points, originally developed by Üstüner (2006). A significant difference was observed between the attitudes of prospective teachers with intrinsic motivations towards the profession of teaching and those of latter teachers with extrinsic motivations towards the profession of teaching. Other variables for which significant differences were observed include gender, the type of the department/program they study, the order of the program in the UEE (University Entrance Examination) preference list, and the socio-economic status (SES) of the neighborhood and family they live in.