An Assessment on Self-Efficacy of Candidate Turkish and Primary School Teachers for Teaching Profession

Self-efficacy is not a passive characteristic or determiner of the self-system, but a dynamic aspect of the other factors that make up the self-system such as the capacity to do work, the success one experiences in that work, motives and self-regulation mechanisms. The self-efficacy perception level of the undergraduate students who study at the Turkish and Primary School Teaching Department changes when they are examined in accordance with the different variations? Purpose: In the research, it was aimed to specify the self-efficacy perception of the candidate Turkish and primary school teachers. Method: The study is screening model. The data of this study was obtained through "Self-Efficacy Scale" developed by Ülper and Baðcý (2012). The data obtained in this study was analysed using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) for Windows 21.0 program. In comparing the quantitative data t-test was used to define the differences between two groups. One-Way ANOVA test was used to compare the parameters among the groups when the number of the group was more than two. The Scheffe test was used to identify the group causing the difference. Findings and Results: The "teaching knowledge", "specific field knowledge", "general field knowledge" and "teaching implementations" level of the students, who participated in this study, is fair. Their "measurement implementations" are high. It is found that their "general self-efficacy" level is fair. Among the 400 student who participated in this study, the measurement implementation scores of the students at the grade 3 were found to be higher than those of the students at the grade 2. Conclusions and Recommendations: According to the findings of this study the self-efficacy perception of the candidate teachers is at the "fair" level. The self-efficacy perception of the candidates is not different from each other in terms of gender and grade level. The self-efficacy perception is different in according to the department they study. It is observed that some of our findings overlap with the findings obtained in the literature while some of them set totally opposite results forth. This may result from structural and contextual features of the measurement tools as well as the personal traits of the candidate teachers participated in this study.