Teacher Candidates' Viewpoints Regarding General Competencies for Teaching Profession and the Necessity Level of Teaching Profession Courses

In this study, the relationship between the general competencies for teaching profession and teacher training programs in Turkey were investigated. The data were collected from 304 undergraduate students studying at a faculty of education in a state university. In order to collect data a scale consisting of the statements in general competencies for teaching profession and a list of elective and mandatory courses in the renewed teacher training program were used. The results revealed that students’ competency levels were high. However, the correlation between the competency levels and the GPA of the students was weak. It was also found that pre-school teaching department students had significantly higher competency scores than the other students’. Lastly, it was found that the most required course was ‚Teaching Practice I-II‛ and the least required course was ‚The Philosophy of Education‛ from the participants’ point of view. This study was carried out in the descriptive model within quantitative research approach. Descriptive research examines the current issues as it is and there is not any intervention. Since the main purpose of this study was to determine the opinions of prospective teachers according to the updated teacher training programs and to determine their professional competencies levels, it was found appropriate to conduct the study in a descriptive model. Data of the study was gathered from 304 senior and third-grade students studying at education faculty of a public university in 2018-2019 academic year. The 66% of the participants were women (n=202) and the 34% of them were men (n=102) and the ages of the participants ranged between 19 to 23. Two different data collection tools were utilized and the first one was a self-report scale consisted of 23 indicators of teacher competencies. The participants were asked to state the self-evaluation level of the competencies in five-point Likert scale. The scale was developed by the researchers and the factorial structure of it had been analyzed before the real application. The second data gathering tool was the list of educational sciences courses provided as electives and mandatory in the updated teacher training programs. The students were asked to indicate the level of these courses for the Lastly, several information of the participants was included into the study in order to analyze the relationships between the variables and scale scores. For data analyses, descriptive statistics, correlation analyses and ANOVA were performed based on the research questions and all of the estimations were done through the SPSS 22.0 program.


Introduction
In line with the rapid developments in technology and science, nearly all systems have gone through the radical changes. Education systems are one of these systems and since the last decades of the 20 th century, new approaches and techniques have been proposed and both students' and teachers' roles have changed. The expected qualities and abilities of students have been diversified and learning by practicing rather than rote learning has become more essential. Hence, the main role of the teachers has been considered as a guide for students' learning process. Due to such changes, teacher training programs have undergone many changes for the last 20 years both in the world and Turkey. One of these changes was to set professional teaching standards, which was firstly published in the USA in 1987 to train highly qualified teachers. In Turkey, the first studies on the teacher professional competencies were started in 1999. Moreover, teacher professional standards were developed and published in 2006 and then the standards were updated in 2017. The competencies in 2017 professional teaching standards include 11 competency domains and 65 indicators. These are the competencies that teachers graduated from faculties of education in Turkey are expected to acquire. The teacher training programs are also expected to cover these competencies in order to meet the goal of raise the quality of education systems. The teacher training programs were updated in 2018 in parallel with the professional competencies and developments in education. Both teacher training programs and the list of competencies have been introduced to the literature relatively new; therefore, there are few studies investigating the relationship between the competencies and the programs. The studies on competencies were about the previous versions and no study has been found examining the newly developed version in a holistic manner. Due to the currency of both issues, in this study, it was aimed to discover the inclusion of the newly developed teacher training programs to the teacher profession competencies based on students' perspectives.

Method
This study was carried out in the descriptive model within quantitative research approach. Descriptive research examines the current issues as it is and there is not any intervention. Since the main purpose of this study was to determine the opinions of prospective teachers according to the updated teacher training programs and to determine their professional competencies levels, it was found appropriate to conduct the study in a descriptive model. Data of the study was gathered from 304 senior and third-grade students studying at education faculty of a public university in 2018-2019 academic year. The 66% of the participants were women (n=202) and the 34% of them were men (n=102) and the ages of the participants ranged between 19 to 23. Two different data collection tools were utilized and the first one was a self-report scale consisted of 23 indicators of teacher competencies.
The participants were asked to state the self-evaluation level of the competencies in fivepoint Likert scale. The scale was developed by the researchers and the factorial structure of it had been analyzed before the real application. The second data gathering tool was the list of educational sciences courses provided as electives and mandatory in the updated teacher training programs. The students were asked to indicate the necessity level of these courses for the teacher profession. Lastly, several sociodemographic information of the participants was included into the study in order to analyze the relationships between the variables and scale scores. For data analyses, descriptive statistics, correlation analyses and ANOVA were performed based on the research questions and all of the estimations were done through the SPSS 22.0 program.

Results
In line with the research questions, the findings showed that the all participants stated that their competency levels were high and the scale scores of the women were found significantly higher than the men. The competency scores were differed in according to the students' departments and the highest scores were achieved from preschool teaching students and the scores of this group were found significantly higher than all of the other groups. The other finding of the study was that the correlation between the GPA and the competency scale scores was low (r=,270) but significant. The other findings of the study were related with the necessity levels of educational sciences courses. All of the participants stated that Teaching Practice courses were the most essential and Philosophy of Education 548 was the least essential course among the mandatory courses. For the elective ones, while Children Psychology was found the most essential, Anthropology of Education was found as the least essential one. When the preferences of the participants were analyzed based on their competency levels, the students with a higher competency stated that the most essential course among the mandatory ones was Educational Ethic and the least essential one was Sociology of Education. For the elective courses, the preferences of the participants in general and the participants with lower levels of competencies were found the same for the whole group.

Discussion and Conclusion
Based on the results, all the students stated that their teaching professional competencies were high, and this finding was similar with several related studies' results (Kahyaoğlu and Yangın, 2007;Yenen and Kılıç, 2018). However, departments with the highest competency levels seemed to vary in the literature. Also the low but significant correlation between the students' perceived competency levels and GPA corresponded to several studies. Lastly, the students' preferences about the necessity of the educational sciences courses were analyzed and in different studies, Teaching Practice courses were defined as the most essential by the students as well.
In future studies, some qualitative data along with quantitative data may be collected in order to deepen our understanding on the students' perceptions and opinions about the revised teacher training programs and teacher profession competencies. Also this study has showed that students' preferences should be taken into account especially the process of the determination of the courses. If they have a chance to attend to the courses based on their interests and abilities, they will benefit from the courses more. Moreover, the course selection behaviors of the students might be examined in accordance with the competencies, and the opinions and suggestions of other shareholders can be investigated in order to gather more detailed information.