Elsevier

Teaching and Teacher Education

Volume 22, Issue 8, November 2006, Pages 1068-1083
Teaching and Teacher Education

Education faculty students’ tendencies and beliefs about the teacher's role in education: A case study in a Turkish University

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.04.020Get rights and content

Abstract

This study aims at determining the tendencies of teacher candidates in a Turkish university concerning static (institutional) versus innovative (democratic and global) teacher roles, along with the relation between these roles and explanatory variables. The study covers 419 teacher candidates from the Turkish, mathematics, humanities, sciences and class teaching areas.

The results of the study show that the teacher candidates are sensitive towards democratic and global teacher roles while they are undecided about static institutional roles. The explanatory variables such as education, levels of parental income and gender are found to be significant in affecting the teacher candidates’ responses. The findings related to the areas of specialisation indicate that teacher training programmes in Turkey are not successful in harmonising the attitudes of the teacher candidates towards their profession. Hence, it may be deduced that teacher training programmes are in need of restructuring to harmonise the attitudes of teacher candidates in an individualised and flexible way.

Introduction

The mission of teacher training is based on two views: that of the natural and static social roles of training and that of its innovative roles compatible with a democratic and global society. According to the first, the teacher provides the institutional authority, emphasises the learning activity and follows scientific developments. According to the latter, he/she displays actions orientated to the current diversification and creates opportunities to participate in social events besides instruction (Travers & Rebore, 2000, pp. 2–3).

Contemporary social change motivates active and responsible individuals towards change. Many researchers are of the opinion that reconstruction and reform efforts are materialised by teachers and that if such activities are not accepted by teachers they cannot be implemented. The reason is that the attitude and behaviour of teachers have considerable power in influencing students (Halstead & Taylor, 2000; cited in Rice, 2002, p. 23).

However, strategies of change imposed by the curricula and do not necessarily take into consideration the belief, views and productive and creative capacities of teachers (Altrichter & Elliot, 2000; Elliot, 1998). Therefore, it is thought that in the training of teachers, the teaching of content-related knowledge and pedagogical capabilities only is not sufficient. In the literature, views defending the necessity of long-term personal training programmes that take into consideration the individual characteristics of teacher candidates, aiming at affecting their preconceived beliefs, are quite common (Conlon, 2000; Ghaith & Shaaban, 1999; Graber, 1996; Gunstone et al., 1993; Hollingsworth, 1992, cited in Wideen, Smith, & ve Moon, 1998, p. 161).

There are two general objectives of this study. The first is to distinguish between institutional teacher roles and innovative and adaptive teacher roles, while the second is to investigate the correlation between such attitudes and gender, branch of work, educational levels of the parents and other such variables, so that we can reach a general opinion about the effects of the present teacher training programmes in Turkey on the homogenisation of the candidate group.

School education, by definition, is related to the public domain. In this context, the teacher training function is an important public responsibility and is prone to adhere to the status quo. The teacher provides the institutional authority and emphasises the activity of learning. He/she subscribes to the idea that curricula are satisfactory and assigns top priority to securing class discipline and academic standards. However, in order to ensure all these, he/she may neglect the expectations of the contemporary and dynamic community that is continuously changing. Teachers must be capable of being sensitive to such expectations and they should be a concern in the aims of training (Goodlad, 1994).

The state tries to attain a common compromise by means of central curricula. However, the teachers and systems of education cannot isolate themselves from the various needs and current problems of contemporary society (Elliot, 1998; Tabachnick & Zeichner, 1993). These various current needs are generally related to expectations for active and responsible citizenship.

In this study, teacher roles are treated in two ways: static (institutional) and innovative (democratic and global). Although democratic and global roles are used together in the scientific literature, we will treat them in two distinct dimensions. Hicks (1997) states that global training depends on two training traditions: those related to student development and those more directed towards the creation of a just and equalitarian society. While the first dimension emphasises the individual's development, independence and individualism, the second stresses the social whole that is attentive to diversity, justice and equality. These two dimensions, that are treated by Hicks within the global training tradition, are taken up separately in this study. The first, individual dimension which assigns importance to the singularity and independence of the individual is understood as the democratic and the second, the social dimension which recognises the importance of togetherness of the individual with others, is understood as the global dimension. Moreover, the view can be advanced that the two dimensions cannot develop in unison as stipulated in the literature, but rather that the boundaries of the global thinking are wider than those of the democratic one in terms of the importance given to others. Therefore, the dimensions of the democratic and the global society will be treated separately in this study, despite the certain, essential similarities they may have.

Democratic training is based on the concept of individual-centred training. How, as well as what is being taught by the teacher, the kind of communication and interaction he/she is undertakes with the students, how closely he/she is acquainted with them and how well he/she can respond to their expectations are all important.

The teacher must assign the highest importance to individual development; the individual needs to be recognised and respected. This expectation arises not because of belonging to a group but because of free will and personal abilities (Altrichter & Elliot, 2000). It is important to give responsibility to the student and to channel his/her energy and interest into constructive activities in order to meet this expectation (Sadker & Sadker, 2000). Also it is important to create a feeling of mutual trust between the student and the teacher and to develop a class environment where an atmosphere of approval, determined decisiveness and information transparency are prevalent (Demirbolat, 1998; Ovens, 1999). The provision of conditions suitable for self-realisation is another integral part of complementing the individual development. Self-realisation means the achievement of the final target that is attainable within the individual's capabilities. To attain this, it is important that the teacher offers options to the student, includes him/her in decision processes, gives responsibilities and keeps the means of claiming rights open under all conditions (Demirbolat, 1998).

The success of the first two strategies renders a third one, the creation of an effective process of communication. In this process, it is especially important that the reactions of the teacher create an effective environment for learning. The students not only want to know when their performance is satisfactory, but also when their efforts are not satisfactory or not approved. It is necessary that the teachers use proper evaluation as a tool of learning and that they comprise habits of effective feedback (Kaplan & Edelfelt, 1996). Only a teacher who evaluates without judging, corrects without controlling and senses the individual without reflecting back or prejudice can create an effective means of communication (Develay, 1994). The teacher must realise that students have different approaches to learning and must believe in the importance of creating training opportunities that can be adapted to each individual student (Kaplan & Edelfelt, 1996). The teacher must be sensitive to the social and cultural interests of the students (in connection with encouragement) and must be able to use the current events and facts in their cultures in order to enable the students to see their courses as relevant to their lives. The achievement of all these requires the adoption of “critical thinking training” as a method. Critical thinking takes different ideas about complex issues into consideration and is very important in teaching how to learn (Oldham, 2002). Critical thinking training helps one to reject the given information as fact, to think in terms of causalities and to develop the skill of problem solving. With training in critical thinking, the individual gains a personality that is self-confident, responsible, participatory and independent (Atabek, 2000).

A teacher that performs the roles that are related to the democratic society pays attention to the quality of student–teacher interactions, to the creation of a democratic, liberating class structure, and to the individuality and self-development of the individual.

Global training is based on the concept of interdependence. This concept explains many interdependencies and relations between the people, places, subjects and events that exist in the present day (Hicks, 1997). The most basic difference between global training and the rest is that it focuses on cultural differences (Döşoğlu-Deniz, 1999).

The survival of an effective school is mainly dependent upon the links it has with the other social ecosystems. The ecosystem of school exists within larger ecosystems and is in interaction with the individual and the surrounding whole within an environmental matrix. The success of the school is dependent upon the quality of the relationship it has within this matrix (Goodlad, 1994, p. 218). In this sense, Kaplan and Edelfelt (1996) argue that the effectiveness of schools is dependent upon their ability to act with an approach that is based on “cooperation”.

Schools that choose the process of reform and reconstruction need try to compose a scheme of cooperation with local businesses, social establishments, families and students, besides the school officials. In this process, they must be attentive to the creation of a work environment that is based on prize and target structures which are not competitive (Arends, 1994).

However, preparation for these various roles does not generally have priority in teacher training agenda, even though it is necessary that a curriculum interact with the innovations that aim at rearing multi-faceted professionals that can conform to the world in which they live (Nicholson, 1996).

The teacher attributes that are expressed as belonging to the “Global Teacher” (Steiner, 1996) offer a wider perspective for teacher training. The global teacher is interested in local, national and global communities’ events and activities, actively seeks information while approaching the sources with scepticism, adheres to an egalitarian stand against racial, sexual, class, physical and intellectual discrimination in a determined manner and realises the unavoidability of mutual sensitivity between his/her and other societies and ecological systems.

This study aims at identifying the tendencies related to attitude and sensitivity to innovation and diversification on the part of senior class students (teacher candidates) in the Department of Primary Education at Gazi University in Ankara. The study focuses on:

  • (1)

    The tendencies of the teacher candidates towards static institutional roles.

  • (2)

    The tendencies of the teacher candidates towards democratic society with respect to sensitivity to innovative and diversified roles.

  • (3)

    The tendencies of the teacher candidates towards global society with respect to sensitivity to innovative and diversified roles.

  • (4)

    The relationships between the tendencies of the teacher candidates and their gender, parents’ education, family income, residence and area of study.

Section snippets

Participants

The population of the study is the senior class students of the Department of Primary School Teaching of Gazi University, Ankara (Turkey) in the 2002–2003 academic year. The total size of the group is 599. There are five sections of specialisation in the department: Turkish, Humanities, Mathematics, Science and Class Teaching. All the students in these sections take teaching profession courses with a common content, besides their respective section courses. Upon graduation, the students become

Frequency and distributions

Table 1 gives the distribution of the sample group with respect to gender, area of specialisation, family income, parents’ education and residence in terms of totals and percentages for each variable, separately. In the sample, females constitute the majority of the whole, while class teaching section is the largest among the areas of specialisation, middle income families are the largest of the income groups, primary school graduate parents are the largest in terms of parents’ education and

Gender

In the development of the views on the roles teacher should play, gender appeared to be an important variable. With respect to the democratic and global roles, there is a significant difference between male and female students, with the female ones highly in favour of such roles. Especially with respect to the teacher roles related to global society, male students are the ones who do not agree at all while agreeing with the static teacher roles at a high rate. In order to determine the relation

Discussion

The following conclusions can be drawn from the study:

  • 1.

    The candidates are sensitive towards and generally supportive of democratic and global roles on the part of the teacher and are undecided about the static institutional roles. This result is promising in showing that future teachers are prepared for democratic and global roles. However, whether their opinions will change after they start working and especially whether the static roles about which they were undecided will reduce their

Implications

It is clear from the above analysis that the background of the teacher candidate, his/her personal attributes and the environment in which he/she grew up are influential in the development of their values related to teaching, rather than the programmes that train teachers. This result is similar to the findings of other researchers (Bullough, 1990; Calderhead & Roboson, 1991; Zahorik, 1989; cited in Ghaith & Shaaban, 1999, p. 489) who conclude that school experiences are influenced by past

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