Evaluation of KPSS (Turkish national teacher examination) results as accountability in teacher education

Abstract

After the 1980s, a new public administration approach was adopted. Administrators had been accountable to executives and public for the resources utilized and results obtained after this transformation. Administrators in the School of Education are also responsible for this kind of accountability. It has been argued that these administrators should be accountable for the results of centralized teacher placement exam and some practices have been seen in this context in the world. This study examined the levels of achievement of universities in KPSS-part of Educational Science Test- and evaluated that whether these results can be used in terms of accountability. With this purpose in mind, the first and last five universities were determined according to KPSS results and whether there is a correlation between the mean scores in the "University Entrance Examination" (OSS) to enter to different universities and the mean scores that students obtained from the Test of Educational Sciences in KPSS or not was examined. This research indicated that the most successful universities are Central and Western Anatolian Universities while the most unsuccessful universities are East and South-East Anatolian Universities in the KPSS exam. Moreover, a low correlation was found between the OSS scores of universities and the scores of their graduates in Educational Science Test in KPSS. This result reveals that those students graduating from the programs requiring high scores cannot show the same success at the Educational Science Test in KPSS.