Evaluation of prospective English teachers' self-efficacy perceptions and attitudes towards constructivist learning environments

The purpose of the study is to investigate self-efficacy perceptions and attitudes of prospective English teachers to clarify if there is a relationship between senior and junior prospective English teachers towards constructivist learning environments (CLE) by taking into account their gender and year of study. This quantitative study was carried out at Ondokuz Mayıs University in 2018-2019 academic year with the participation of 146 prospective English teachers. 86 of the participants are senior prospective English teachers while 60 of them are junior prospective English teachers. The study was conducted as a survey-based research by using two questionnaires as data gathering tools. One of the questionnaires is "Self-Efficacy Beliefs Scale for the Implementation of the Constructivist Approach" developed by Evrekli, Ören and Inel (2009) which is a five-point Likert scale. The other one is a "Teacher Attitude Scale towards Constructivism" developed by Evrekli, Inel, Balım and Kesercioglu (2009) which is also a five-point scale. The data acquired through scales were computerized with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 23) through descriptive statistics to find out self-efficacy perceptions and attitudes of prospective English teachers. Besides, t-test and Mann-Whitney U test were used to discover if there was a significant difference between senior and junior prospective teachers in terms of their gender and year of study towards CLEs. Lastly, Spearman's Correlation test was used to discover whether there was a relationship between self-efficacy perceptions and attitudes of prospective English teachers. The findings of the study revealed that senior and junior prospective English teachers had high self-efficacy perceptions and positive attitudes towards CLEs. The findings also revealed that there was a significant difference between junior male and female prospective English teachers with regards to their self-efficacy perceptions in favour of female prospective English teachers in terms of gender variable even though there was not any significant difference in terms of their attitudes. As for senior prospective English teachers, the findings demonstrated that there was not any significant difference between female and male senior prospective English teachers in terms of self-efficacy perception towards CLEs. However, there was a significant difference between male and female senior prospective teachers in terms of their attitudes in favour of females according to the findings of the study. With regard to year of study variable, the findings indicated that there was not any significant difference in terms of prospective English teachers' self-efficacy perception towards CLEs. On the other hand, it was discovered that there was a significant difference between junior and senior prospective teachers in terms of their attitudes towards CLEs in favour of junior prospective teachers. Lastly, no significant relationship was found between self-efficacy perceptions and attitudes of prospective English teachers towards CLEs. In the light of the research, it can be concluded that the study contributes to the English language and teaching by helping raise the awareness regarding prospective English teachers' self-efficacy perceptions and attitudes towards constructivist learning environments.