The relationships among preservice teachers' professional identities, teacher self-efficacy beliefs and teaching motivations

This study aims to examine the relationships among preservice teachers' professional identities, teacher self-efficacy beliefs and teaching motivations. The data were collected from 4th grade preservice teachers at Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Education in 2019-2020 fall semester. The data were collected using Early Teacher Identity Measure (Arpacı and Bardakçı, 2015), Teacher's Sense of Efficacy Scale (Çapa, Çakıroğlu and Sarıkaya, 2005), Motivation to Teach Scale (Güzel Candan and Evin Gencel, 2015). In data analysis Kruskal-Wallis H, Mann-Whitney U, Dunn tests, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Spearman's Rank-Order Correlation were used. The findings indicated that preservice teachers' professional identities were high, teacher self-efficacy beliefs were quite sufficient, teaching motivations were moderate-high. Regarding the preservice professional identity while there was a significant difference in favor of female preservice teachers, there were no significant differences considering the type of high school, department, and academic average variables. There were no significant differences in preservice teachers' teacher self-efficacy beliefs according to type of high school, department, and academic average variables. While there were significant differences in preservice teachers' teaching motivations in favor of the female teacher candidates and the type of high school variables, no significant differences were observed in the department and academic average variables. There was a moderate positive significant relationship between preservice teachers' professional identities and teacher self-efficacy beliefs. There was a moderate positive significant relationship between preservice teachers' professional identities and teaching motivations and a moderate positive significant relationship between preservice teachers' teacher self-efficacy beliefs and teaching motivations.