Öz
Purpose: This study examined the role of pre-service early childhood education teachers’ collegiate experiences and perceptions in relation to their teacher identity in Turkey. Method and Materials: Measures of pre-professional teacher identity scale, professional satisfaction scale for teacher candidates, perception scale of teacher candidates regarding friendship relations, perception scale of academics’ collective competence, individual competence of academics and course intracommunication scale were used. After assessing teacher identity scores of all pre-service teachers studying, we used group means and standard deviation (ss) and quartiles to create two contrasting groups. Of all participants (N = 268), 75 pre-service teachers (upper quartile; +2 ss) were in the “positive identity” group, and 68 (lower quartile; – 2 ss) were in the “negative identity” group. Results: When contrasted to their peers with negative teacher identity, pre-service teachers with positive identity reported that they had significantly better relationships with their friends and perceived their classmates being more supportive, were more satisfied with their field of study, had more favorable perceptions of their professors’ collective efficacy and reported establishing positive communication with their professors during classes.