Attitudes of preschool teacher candidates towards the teaching profession

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine the attitudes of preschool teacher candidates towards the teaching profession. Teaching is a very special profession. Not only a person who will choose teaching as a profession should really have a great desire for it, s/he should also have the required personal qualities appropriate for the profession. This is a profession that is very demanding, but rewarding at the same time, requires great responsibilities, is open to innovations, is informed of the developmental features that knows and understands children, values spirituality rather than materiality, requires to have good communication skills; in short, it is a profession that requires its candidates to have many professional as well as personal characteristics. One wonders if the teacher candidates who will acquire this profession requiring many crucially important qualities really possess all these qualities. What do those teacher candidates think which qualities are needed to become a teacher? In this study, it was aimed to determine the attitudes of teacher candidates who chose to study at this department towards the teaching profession and examined whether the education they received at the university made a difference on their opinions and views about the teaching profession. The population of the research was comprised of the teacher candidates studying at the preschool departments of universities and the sample of the study was composed of a total of 173 teacher candidates 106 whom were first year and 67 final year (fourth year) students studying at the preschool department of Uludag University. For this purpose, first and final year teachers candidates were asked questions prepared by the researcher. Firstly percentage and frequency calculations were made on the data obtained from the study and then interpretations and evaluations were carried out. In this study, the qualities required in a preschool teacher in order of importance were determined as; "love of children", "possessing the professional personality characteristics", "being active and full of energy", "possessing positive personality characteristics", and "love of the profession".