Abstract
PRE-SERVICE HISTORY TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF THEIR TEACHING PROFESSION COMPETENCIES (AN EXAMPLE FROM ERZURUM)
The purpose of this study is to reveal pre-service history teachers’ perceptions of their teaching profession competencies. Participants of the study consist of final year pre-service teachers studying history teaching in Kazım Karabekir Faculty of Education in Ataturk University. A qualitative research design was used in the study and an open ended questionnaire form was used to collect data. The pre-service teachers’ views on content knowledge, methods and techniques, material use, assessment and evaluation, classroom management, learning-teaching situations and competency levels for counselling and the problems pre-service teachers encounter during their education and their solutions were explored with the open-ended questionnaire form. The data obtained were analysed with content analysis method. The findings revealed that pre-service teachers seemed to regard themselves as already competent to teach in all dimensions except for the content knowledge, which they attributed to the education they received. The pre-service teachers identified the problems such as “education is inadequate and inefficient”, “education is based on rote learning”, and “education given is not consistent with the education which will be given in secondary education” and they offered solutions. The most important solution offered is that experiential education must be given more importance.
Keywords
History Teaching, Pre-service History Teachers, Teaching Competencies, Perceptions
