The attitudes of pre-service teachers towards the teaching profession: A scale development study

The aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable measurement scale to determine the attitudes of teacher candidates towards the teaching profession. The survey model was used in the study in many research methods. The study group consisted of 425 pre-service teachers studying in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades of Science Education, Turkish Education, Social Studies Education, Mathematics Education, Classroom Education, Preschool Education, Guidance and Psychological Counseling departments of Kırşehir Ahi Evran University Faculty of Education. The development process of the measurement scale was carried out in three stages, including obtaining expert opinion for content validity, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, respectively. SPSS and AMOS package programs were used in the analysis of the data to reveal the factor structure of the scale. The developed scale has two factors and is a 5-point Likert type. These factors were named as "teacher characteristics" and "love and value". Confirmatory factor analysis was performed with the help of the AMOS program and well-being fit indices confirmed the 2-factors and 28-items structure. The reliability coefficient of the scale is Cronbach Alpha 0.925. Key Words: Attitude, Teaching Profession, Scale Development, Teacher candidates