The Educational Beliefs of Pre-Service Teachers as an Important Predictor of Teacher Identity

Abstract

This study aims to determine the relationship between the educational beliefs and teacher identity of pre-service teachers from all grade levels of four different departments at Afyon Kocatepe University. Besides, to what extent the educational beliefs predict their teacher identity is also examined. The research is conducted using the correlational survey model. The sample of the study consists of 324 pre-service teachers who are studying in all grades at Afyon Kocatepe University. In the data collection process, "Education Belief Scale" developed by Yılmaz, Altınkurt and Çokluk (2011) and "Early Teacher Identity Measure" developed by Friesen and Besley (2013) and adapted into Turkish by Arpacı and Bardakçı (2015) is used. In line with the findings, the pre-service teachers' dominant educational philosophies are identified as existentialism, progressivism, re-constructionism, perennialism, and essentialism, respectively. There is a significant and positive relationship between educational beliefs and teacher identities, except for essentialist belief. The results suggest that the pre-service teachers' educational beliefs and teacher identities differ significantly in terms of gender, grade and department variables. Additionally, while the prediction model is significant, progressivist educational belief is found out to be the most important dimension in the model that explains the teacher identity. These four educational beliefs, together, account for 23% of the change in teacher identity level of pre-service teachers.

Exploring the Relationships between Possible Selves and Early Teacher Identity of Turkish Pre-service Teachers

“…Female PSTs have a significantly higher mean than male PSTs. This difference in favor of female PSTs is also supported by research in Turkish context (Aptekin Yolcu, 2018;Babanoğlu & Ağçam, 2019;Çelik & Kalkan, 2019;Eğmir & Çelik, 2019;Karalı, 2018) though Çetin (2017) and Alkış Küçükaydın and Gökbulut (2019) found no significant difference in terms of gender.…”

“…The results in the literature regarding the grade level are mixed. Eğmir and Çelik (2019) and Çelik and Kalkan (2019) found a significant difference in PSTs' mean scores of early teacher identity in terms of grade level. The senior students had higher means.…”

“…Regarding the source of difference, in both the total of FTPS and FTPS factors of 1 and 3, the difference is between pre-school teaching department and primary school teaching department, and between pre-school teaching department and elementary mathematics teaching department, in favor of pre-school teaching department in both cases. Though some study results support this finding (Eğmir & Çelik, 2019), there are studies reporting no difference (Çetin, 2017) or a difference in favor of other departments, such as psychological counseling teacher training (Çelik & Kalkan, 2019).…”

“…In the study by Friesen and Besley (2013), student teachers were found to have a high level of early teacher identity, too. Other research studies in the Turkish context also have revealed that Turkish PSTs have a high level of early teacher identity (Alkış Küçükaydın & Gökbulut, 2019; Aptekin Yolcu 2018; Babanoğlu & Ağçam 2019; Ceylan, 2019;Çelik & Kalkan, 2019;Eğmir & Çelik, 2019;Karalı, 2018). Even the PSTs attending a pedagogical formation program (non-education graduates taking pedagogy courses to be a teacher) were found to have high level of ETI (Ulubey et al, 2018;Uluyol & Şahin, 2018).…”

Öğretmen Adaylarının Matematik Kimlikleri, Meslek Öncesi Öğretmen Kimlikleri ve FeTeMM Öğretim Yönelimlerinin İncelenmesi

“…It is seen that some of these studies were field-specific (English, music, elementary pre-service teachers) (Babanoğlu & Ağçam, 2020;Koca, 2016;Küçükaydın & Gökbulut, 2019), while other studies were conducted using different sampling techniques for pre-service teachers studying in different departments of education faculties. (Eğmir & Çelik, 2019). In addition, it was determined that studies were carried out to determine the early teacher identities of pre-service teachers (Çelik & Kalkan, 2019;Uluğbey, Yıldırım & Alpaslan, 2018) who received the pedagogical formation certificate and the pre-service teachers who received the education faculty and pedagogical formation certificate (Karatepe & Akay, 2020).…”