The Reasons of Social Studies Teacher Candidates' Preference for the Teaching Profession and Their Attitudes towards the Profession: The Example of Ağrı Province

Abstract

Social studies is an interdisciplinary lesson that shapes the comprehensive and rich content compiled from various social science disciplines in accordance with the levels of 4th-7th grades and aims to provide students at the mentioned grade levels with the knowledge, values and skills they need in social life.The social studies teachers who provide the teaching of this lesson have an important place in the educational process of social studies. From this point of view, investigating the reasons for choosing the teaching profession of social studies teacher candidates studying at universities and their attitudes towards the profession is important for the development of social studies education. Based on this point, a mixed sequential exploratory pattern was used in this research. The participant group of the study consisted of 125 Social Studies teacher candidates who are studying at the social studies teaching program of Ağrı Ibrahim Çeçen University. In the collection of the data a semi-structured interview form developed by the researcher and a scale were used. Kruskal Wallis test was used to analyze quantitative data and descriptive analysis technique was used to analyze qualitative data. In the research, it was determined that the attitudes of social studies teacher candidates towards the teaching profession did not show significant differences according to the class variable. On the other hand, it has been concluded that the reasons for teacher candidates to prefer social studies teaching are very diverse. Various suggestions have been made within the scope of the results reached in the research.