Turkish Pre-School Practice Teachers’ and Pre-School Teacher Candidates’ Perceptions of School Practices

Abstract

This study was conducted to explore preschool teacher candidates' and practices teachers' views of school practices. As the research approach, the survey method was used. Using convenience sampling, it was chosen one hundred eight teachers and two hundred fifty-six preschool teacher candidates in education faculty in a state university in Turkey. Data were collected by the two written opinion forms developed by the researchers and analysed descriptively. The results showed that the teacher candidates saw school practices as necessary to put the training they received at teacher training into practice, but they thought weekly practice hours to be insufficient. And some other findings suggested that the teacher candidates complained about the lack of teaching material and the school physical conditions. They claimed that transportation to schools is another significant challenge. They acknowledged that practice teachers exhibited positive attitudes towards them, while just a minority complained of undesirable teacher behaviours. And, they believed that practices had a considerable contribution to their professional development and class size had an unfavourable effect on the practices in crowded classes. It was another finding of the study that being watched by candidates had a harmful influence on the practice teachers' motivation. Furthermore, practice teachers pointed out that the crowded, unsuitable, and small size classes affected negatively the practices and emphasized the importance of spreading the practices throughout all training programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]