Evaluation of teacher candidates’ life skills in terms of departments and grade levels

Abstract

The purposes of this research were (i) testing the factor and model structure of the life-skills scale (LSS) on teacher candidates and (ii) inspecting the life skills of teacher candidates according to their departments and grade levels. The participants consisted of 518 teacher candidates, all of whom were students in their sophomore or senior years in the education faculty of a state university. The data were collected through the LSS, which has 83 items. The confirmatory factor analysis of LSS verified the ten-factor structure for the teacher candidates (aged between 18 and 25). There were no statistically significant differences in the mean value of teacher candidates’ life skills according to the grade variable. On the contrary, there were statistically significant differences in the dependent variables according to the department. Future directions of research regarding the educational outcomes of life skills were discussed.

Keywords

• Life skills scale
• teacher candidates
• department
• grade level
• Comfirmatory factor analysis

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