Preservice History Teachers’ Attitudes towards Identity Differences

Abstract

The ongoing changes in history education in support of diversity have an effect on Turkey even if on a limited scale. Although the current history curriculum in Turkey promotes the identity transmission instead of respecting different identities, it also has some goals such as “teaching the students about basic values including peace, tolerance, mutual understanding, democracy, and human rights, and making them sensitive about maintaining and improving these values”, which is compatible with the contemporary understanding of history education. However, it must be noted that the attitudes and perceptions of teachers are as important as their presence in curriculum in terms of reaching the aims of history education. The aim of this study was to reveal preservice history teachers’ attitudes towards identity differences. Identity Attitudes Scale (IAS), which was developed by Yazici (2016) to measure the attitudes towards identity differences, was conducted on 314 preservice history teachers. Preservice teachers’ attitudes towards identity differences in terms of gender, and their ethnic, religious and political identities were examined using t-test and one-way variance analysis. As a result, it was found that the variables had effect on preservice teachers’ attitudes at varying rates.