ÖĞRETMEN ADAYLARININ ÖĞRETMENLİK MESLEĞİNE İLİŞKİN TUTUMLARININ İNCELENMESİ

Mproving the quality of the education systems and thus, accelerating development and progress is an issue in the agenda of our country as in other countries around the World. It is often emphasized that the curriculums are not effective enough to realize the aforementioned objectives although they are co ntinuously revised in line with the rapid and unpredictable development of technology. In this process, teachers, as they were in the past, stand out as the indispensable element of the education systems and keeps its significance. The main p urpose of this study is to e x amine the attitudes of prospective teachers towards teaching as a profession in a newly established education faculty and to determine whether there is a difference between their attitudes and variables as gender, registered type of program, p resence of the teacher in the family and parent’s education level. The sample of this study which was used survey model consisted of 260 students who enrolled in programs of Classroom Teacher Education , Science Education, Social Studies Teacher, Elementary Mathematics Education and Religious Culture and Moral Education in Education Faculty of Barti n University in the 2012 - 2013 academic year. I n this study was used the scale of attitudes towards teaching as a profession deve loped by Tanel, Şengören ve Tanel (2007) and which has C ronbach Alpha reliability of α = 0.87. In the analysis of the data, Independent - Sample t Test, One - W ay - Anova and Scheffe Test were used. The findings indicated that the attitudes of prospective teachers participating in this study towards teaching as a profession were in the range of “I agree” and positive. According to our findings that female prospective teachers had more positive towards teaching as a profession than male prosp ective teachers and also prospective teachers enrolled in Classroom Teacher Education program had more positive attitude towards teaching as a profession than prospective teachers enrolled in Science Education program. Furthermore, it was determined that v ariables as p resence of a teacher in the family, parent’s education level do es not affect the attitudes of prospective teachers towards teaching as a profession. When the importance of attitude towards teaching as a profession is considered in terms of Professional development, it is highly important that all teacher training institutions should act responsibly and be engaged in activities that will improve teachers' attitude towards their profession. It is suggested that studies focusing on comparin g prospective teachers' attitudes from first class to senior class and revealing the factors effective during this process should be carried out. Key Words: The attitude towards t eaching as a profession, prospective teachers