Teacher Candidates’ Value Perceptions and Their Opinions on the Acquisition of Values in Education Faculties

This research aims to determine teacher candidates’ value perceptions and their opinions on the acquisition of values to teacher candidates, in education faculties. In the research, a survey model was used to describe an existing situation. In this context, a questionnaire was applied to 2274 teacher candidates. Research results show that the value perceptions of male teacher candidates are lower than female teacher candidates. The value perceptions of teacher candidates who chose the teaching profession because they had to, were lower than those who preferred it because they loved it. Perceptions of teacher candidates about the acquisition of values are low in the sub-dimensions of understanding and empathy, and medium in the other sub-dimensions. Teacher candidates’ perceptions of the values that teachers should have are quite high in all sub-dimensions. Despite this, the scores regarding the acquisition of the same values in education faculties are statistically significantly lower and middle levels. These results indicate that the values cannot be gained enough in education faculties. Various suggestions were made in line with the research findings and results, and recommendations were made for future research.


Introduction
The concept of moral education was at the forefront before the concepts of values education and character education that used today had yet to be formed in ancient times. It was considered very important that moral values be acquired to individuals through indoctrination (Althof & Berkowitz, 2006, p. 496). The concept of value was first used in the Social Sciences in the early twentieth century. It is derived from the Latin word "valare", used in the sense of being valuable or strong (Bilgin, 1995, p. 83). Schwartz (1999) who is one of the researchers who have important works on values, describes the concept of value as "an actor that helps to choose behaviors or actions, to evaluate the events and individuals, to explain behaviors or actions" and identifies it as "guiding principles in people's lives at a different level in the degree of materiality that serves as desirable goals". Williams (1979, p. 27), defined values as "standards by which members of a culture determine and share what is good or bad, what is desired or undesirable, what is beautiful or ugly". In summary, the value is our belief and acceptance of what, which, and how behaviors are "good," "beautiful," "right," and "sacred." Values are used as criteria in determining accepted behaviors within society. Thus, individuals can understand how to express their thoughts and how best to show their behavior (Fichter, 1990). Therefore, the phenomena of social unity, order, peace, and success are only possible with the adoption of common values. In this respect, values are very important for both individuals and societies. Value education is also called moral education or character education in different disciplines. Some studies emphasize the importance of teacher role in value teaching, while some studies emphasize the education of teacher candidates in value teaching. Guy, Spalding, and Westcott (1961) stated that since values are part of the education system, teacher candidates must be endowed with this subject.
Today, developments in the field of science, technology, industry, and economics have significantly affected the educational process and have been instrumental in the emergence of some social problems. One of these social problems is the loss of value. For teachers who have a very strategic role in the education process, values and acquiring values are one of the important issues that are focused (Unal, 2011). When people were asked, "what's the role of a teacher?" question, they can answer that the role of the teacher is to convey information to prepare children for the future or to improve their mental abilities. However, in addition to passing on information, all teachers are teachers of values education (Straughan, 1988). To raise good citizens, schools need to offer basic and universal values such as honesty, respect for differences, responsibility, fairness, democracy. Teachers have an important role in modeling these values (Yildirim, 2009). Professional values, which are the basis of a profession, are formed by the reflection of personal values and derive their origin from professional ethical values (Horton et al. 2007;Keskin & Yildirim, 2006;Lin & Wang, 2010).
Professional values are acquired to individuals through education specific to the profession (Sabanciogulları & Dogan, 2012).
Several studies have shown that teachers are an indispensable part of values education (Brady, 2011;Veugelers, 2000). Furthermore, Halstead and Xiao (2010) found that students learned values formally and informally from school. Students specifically take the teachers as a model. The teacher is the person emulated by the students in many ways, such as his / her way of reasoning, perception, and interpretation of events, personality, manner, and dress. Hansen (1995) found that teachers informally give moral concepts to their lessons and convey values about how to treat other people and how students should behave. Veugelers, (2000) emphasized the importance of the teacher's role in value teaching. Berkowitz and Bier (2005) found that, intentionally or unintentionally, teachers convey values through role modeling. Guy, Spalding, and Westcott (1961) emphasize that since values are part of the education system, teacher candidates must have sufficient skills in values education. Another study (Milson & Mehlig, 2002) reveals that teachers who have received moral development training during their undergraduate education have high self-sufficiency in teaching character education. Also, Mei-ju, Chen-Hsin, and Pin-Chen, (2014) found that character education can increase the bond between parents and children and significantly affect children's character development.
The impact of globalization on societies is increasing rapidly. This effect also affects the values of societies positively or negatively. It is observed that societies change rapidly in spiritual, moral, humanitarian, etc. values. Children observe and model the behavior of adults, but when children start socializing and go to school, they can learn both positive and negative behavior from their environment. At this point, the teacher shapes children's behavior and is a core element of the system in character education (Anderson, 2002). It cannot be expected to succeed in acquiring values for children only by modeling teacher behaviors. Teachers are required to have the values mentioned to carry out value transfer within the scope of a program. Halstead and Xiao (2010) found that students learn values formally and informally from school. Therefore, the values that teachers have and the correct (within a curriculum) transfer of these values to students is very important. A study was carried out in the literature on the perceptions of values of teacher candidates and the degree to which these values are acquired in the faculties of education. Determining the values of teacher candidates for the teaching profession and acquiring these values in education faculties is considered very important. It is thought that this research will make an important contribution to the literature on the subject.

Problem Statement
What are the perceptions of the teacher candidates about the teaching profession and their views about the acquisition of these values in the education faculties?

Sub-Problems
1. Is there a significant difference in teacher candidates' perceptions of value for the teaching profession according to the gender variable? 2. Is there a significant difference in teacher candidates' perceptions of value for the teaching profession according to the reason for the preference variable?
3. Is there a significant difference between teacher candidates' perceptions of value for the teaching profession and their views on the acquisition of values in education faculties?

Research Model
In the research, a survey model was used to describe an existing situation. Survey models are research approaches that aim to describe a past or present situation as it exists. The event, individual, or object that is the subject of research, is attempted to be defined in its circumstances and as it is. No attempt is made to change them in any way, to influence them. There is something to be known and it is there. The important thing is to be able to observe and identify it appropriately (Karasar, 2016, p. 109).

Research Sample / Study Group
The population of the research consists of the primary education departments of the faculties of education in Turkey. Considering that it is important to acquire values for primary education students who are still in development age, primary education departments were preferred in sample selection. The sample of the study consists of the third and fourth grade, elementary mathematics, science, classroom, and social studies teaching students who are studying in the education faculties of universities selected from different geographical regions. In the selection of samples, one university was selected from seven geographical regions of Turkey by the cluster sampling method. Universities selected from the regions were determined by random sampling. It is aimed that the selected universities will be inclusive of the teacher candidates who live in different geographical regions and have different perspectives. The increase in experience of the faculty and departments that the students are studying as they approach their senior year has been instrumental in the selection of third and fourth-grade students. The demographic characteristics of the participants were presented in Table 1.  Table 1 provides demographic characteristics of the participants; university, geographic region, student ratio from the region where the university is located, gender, and several students.
When the distribution of teacher candidates according to universities is examined, the highest attendance is at Dicle University and the lowest attendance is at Yıldız Technical University. The participation rate of female teacher candidates was 74% and the participation rate of male teacher candidates was 26%. The total number of students participating in the study is 2274. Participation in surveys is voluntary. Data were collected during the spring period of 2017.

Research Instruments and Procedures
Scales that were developed by Demir, (2018) were used as a data collection tool in the research. The first part of the first scale is "demographic features" and the second part is the "Value Perception Scale for the Teaching Profession" and the third part is "The Scale of Acquiring Values for the Teaching Profession in the Faculty of Education". "The value perception scale for the teaching profession" consists of 40 items and eight factors. These factors are; " Being moral and honest,

Data Analysis
The data obtained from 2274 teachers were analyzed with SPSS 21.0 software. Personal information about the participants in the study was resolved with frequency and percentage. In the comparative analysis of data with the feature of continuous variables, parametric test assumptions were tested first. For this purpose, the normal state of the distributions was examined. It is deemed appropriate to evaluate the examinations for the assumption of normality not with a single method, but together with methods such as Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk, arithmetic means, mode, median, skewness and kurtosis coefficients, histogram with the normal distribution curve, stem-andleaf graph (Demir, Saatçioğlu & İmrol, 2016). In this context, arithmetic means, mode, and media being equal or close, skewness and kurtosis coefficients close to 0 within ± 1 limits are shown as evidence for the existence of normal distribution (Kirk, 2008;McKillup, 2012;Tabachnick & Fidell, 2013). This situation showed that it is appropriate to use parametric test statistics that accept normality assumption in data analysis. In the data analysis (t) test, variance analysis, LSD, and Games Howell tests were performed. Eta-squared (ƞ2) coefficient shows how effective the independent variable has on the dependent variable. This value takes a value between 0 and 1. In addition value ,01 small, ,06 medium and ,14 are considered as high level effect size (Cohen, 1988).

Distribution of Value Perception Level Scores by Gender
The t-test results of the teacher candidates according to the gender variable to determine whether there is a significant difference between "Being moral and honest", "Efficient use of resources", "Empathizing", "Respect to the republic" "Liking the profession, and being open to learning", "Understanding", "Being patient", "Respect for national values" and "General average" sub-dimensions and the levels of value perception is shown in Table 2.   Table 2, according to the gender of teacher candidates, a significant difference was identified in the "Being moral and honest", "Efficient use of resources", "Being patient", "Respect to the republic"," Liking the profession and being open to learning", "Understanding" and "Respect for national values," sub-dimensions and "general average" sub-dimension. In the sub-dimension of "Empathizing, "there was no significant difference between genders. When the score distributions and T-test results were examined, the value perceptions of female teacher candidates in all sub-dimensions other than "Empathizing" were higher than male teacher candidates. Besides, considering the etasquared value (η 2 ), it was observed that perceptions of value that were high in favor of female teacher candidates had a low-level effect in all lower dimensions.

Distribution of Value Perception Level Scores by Reason for Preference Level
The t-test results of the teacher candidates according to the reason for preference variable to determine whether there is a significant difference between "Being moral and honest", "Efficient use of resources", "Empathizing", "Respect to the republic" "Liking the profession, and being open to learning", "Understanding", "Being patient", "Respect for national values" and "General average" sub-dimensions and the levels of value perception is shown in Table 3.  Table 3, LSD and Games Howell tests were conducted to determine which groups caused the difference between pre-service teachers' sub-scale mean scores. Significant differences were determined in all sub-dimensions out of "Understanding" according to the reason for the preference level of the teacher candidates. When the score distributions and Anova results of the teacher candidates are examined according to their reason for preference level, teacher candidates value perceptions who chose the teaching profession because they love the teaching profession were higher in all sub-dimensions except "understanding" and "respect to the republic" than teacher candidates who prefer teaching because it is compulsory. Furthermore, when the eta-squared value (η 2 ) is taken into account, it is observed that the reason for the preference level variable has a low impact on all sub-dimension scores of the teacher candidates.

The t-test results of the scores of teacher candidates regarding their perceptions of value for the teaching profession and their views on acquiring values in education faculties
The distribution of the scores regarding the value perceptions of the teacher candidates on: "Being moral and honest", "Efficient use of resources", "Empathizing", "Respect to the republic", "Liking the profession, and being open to learning", "Understanding", "Being patient", "Respect for national values," and "general average" sub-dimensions and acquiring values in the education faculties are given in Table 4.  The research reveals that although the perceptions of value specific to the teaching profession of teacher candidates are at a high level, there is a lack of value teaching in the education faculties, which is very important because their perceptions of value acquisition are at a medium and low level.
This deficiency can be said to be since the teacher candidates acquire values indiscriminately during the formal education process and the lack of value teaching within a program in the faculties of education.

Results and Discussion
In this study, it was observed that there was a significant difference in value perceptions of teacher candidates in all sub-dimensions other than "Empathizing" and that female teacher candidates' value perceptions were higher than male teacher candidates. Similarly, female teachers' perceptions of value for the teaching profession were also higher in the "General average" subdimension. For example, Akin and Ozdemir (2009) Uncu (2008) determined that female teachers' perceptions of values in the subdimensions of Success, Hedonism, Self-direction, Universality, Benevolence, and Security were higher than male teachers. Gumrah's (2015) study on professional values showed that there were no significant differences between nursing students' Professional Values of Nurses Scale "Necessity", "Mobilization" and "Autonomy" sub-dimension scores and the gender of the students. However, female students' "Human dignity" and "Security" sub-dimension scores and scale total scores are statistically significantly higher than male students' scores. In another study in which the perception of the women on gender are more positive concluded that women's vocational school students' perceptions of the value of "Family", "Working-occupation", "Religious" and "Scientific" dimensions, are more than male students (Bolat, 2011). Dilmac, Bozgeyikli, andCikili (2008) found significant differences in the perceptions of values according to gender in favor of men in the dimensions of "Universality" and "Self-direction" and in favor of women in the dimension of "Power". Similarly, in the study of Keskin and Saglam (2014), teacher candidates' views on having human values according to gender there is a significant difference in favor of women classroom teacher candidates in the "Intellectual values", "Spirituality and freedom values" dimensions. Kösoy & Daşdemir (2019), in their study with senior teacher candidates, reveal that values education affects the universalism, benevolence and security value tendencies of female candidates and their value tendencies are high. Despite these consequences, Sezgin (2006), which compared the individual and organizational values of teachers, did not find any differences according to gender. A similar study concluded that gender variables are not effective on individual and organizational values (Posner, 1992). In Tunca's (2012) value perception survey with classroom teachers, there was no significant difference in value perceptions relative to gender.
Similarly, research on the democratic values of teachers (Oguz, 2011;Yazici, 2011;Yılmaz, 2011) found no significant difference between the democratic values of female and male teacher candidates.
Investigating the value preferences of classroom teachers, Ozturk (2014) found that gender is not determinative in value perception. The relationship between the perception of value and gender in the literature has conflicting results.
In the study, it was determined that the perceptions of the "General Average" values of the teacher candidates who chose the teaching profession because they liked the teaching profession were higher than the pre-service teachers who chose the teaching profession because they had to. Gümrah's (2015) research on professional values of the nursing students, "Human Dignity", "Safety" and "Autonomy" sub-dimension scores of the Nurses' Professional Values Scale are compared, the difference between them is not statistically significant. On the other hand, the "Obligation", "Acting" sub-dimension scores and scale total scores of the students whose reason to choose the profession are "ideal" are statistically significantly higher than the scores of the students whose reason for choosing the profession is the guidance of their relatives. Here, the "ideal", which is the reason for choosing the profession, can be interpreted as willingly and fondly choosing the profession and supports the results of the research.
According to the results obtained, it was concluded that the perceptions of the teachers towards the values that teachers should have are quite high in all the sub-dimensions, although their views on the acquisition of the same values in education faculties are lower. In the studies, teachers stated that they feel inadequate in values education and that they are not educated about values (Çetingöz, 2015;Ogelman & Sarıkaya, 2015;Katılmış & Balcı, 2017;Ülavere & Veisson;). In addition, as a result of Şahin (2013) research; Social studies teacher candidates stated that the education of values given at the university was insufficient. In his 2014 study with teachers, Çelebi (2014) found that the value perception averages of teacher candidates were high. Values are phenomena that affect the beliefs, attitudes, and behavior of individuals. Values, which are one of the factors leading to the behavior of individuals, are first shaped by the family and then by the means of school, social environment, and other factors. Values vary from community to community. In some societies, behavior that is considered unacceptable can be accepted naturally in other societies. For example, in a society where the perception of "honesty" is low, it is natural to lie, while in a society where it is high, it can be seen as a shame. Societies' perceptions of value vary in the different classes within them, but there are also values that the whole society accepts as common, such as patriotism.
Common/universal values, which play a very important role in the orderly conduct of social life, should be given to individuals in a planned way.
Having awareness of an individual's behavior requires first knowing that behavior. Therefore, for the individual to behave in accordance with social values, it is necessary to have knowledge about the values that lead to the behavior (Aydin & Gurler, 2013, p. 32). The individual should be informed about choosing the right-wrong or good-bad situation of a behavior. In particular, children who are in the process of forming personality and character should be explained why they should do the good/right thing and why they should not do the wrong/bad thing. Children can make sense of the prohibitions in their minds and keep up with the social order if it is explained that negative thoughts and behaviors harm them and others (Çileli, 1986, p. 110). Otherwise, individuals make a haphazard sense of values or mimic the generally accepted perceptions of value around them.
The teaching of values can be carried out through formal or hidden programs, but it should be noted that the teacher carries out the education activities in the classroom (Genc & Eryaman, 2008).
The research reveals that although the perceptions of value specific to the teaching profession of teacher candidates are at a high level, there is a lack of value teaching in the education faculties, which is very important because their perceptions of value acquisition are at a medium and low level.
This deficiency can be said to be due to a lack of value teaching within a program in education faculties.

Recommendations Based on Research Results
 As a result of the research, it was concluded that values are acquired at medium and low levels in education faculties. Therefore, teachers' value education can be supported through in-service training.  Moreover, the high perception of value does not mean that value will turn into attitude and behavior. Therefore, the degree to which teacher candidates or teachers convert values into behavior can also be examined.
 Considering that values are decisive in directing the behavior of individuals, value perception and value acquisition studies can be done for other professional groups other than the teaching profession and the results can be compared with other professional groups.