Investigation of primary school teacher candidates' self-efficacies for developing verbal,reading and writing skills in terms of certain predictor variables

The purpose of this study is to reveal the predictors of self-efficacies of primary school teacher candidates' for developing verbal, reading and writing skills in terms of their self-efficacies for applicating constructivist approach and their teaching motivations. The study is designed as a quantitative correlational survey research. The sample of the study consists of 374 primary school teacher candidates who enrolled at three different state universities department of primary education in the faculty of education. Data regarding the predictors of self-efficacies of primary school teacher candidates' for developing verbal, reading and writing skills in terms of their self-efficacies for applicating constructivist approach and their teaching motivations were gathered using Verbal skills Development Teacher Self-efficacy Scale, Reading Skills Development Teacher Self-efficacy Scale, Writing Skills Development Teacher Self-efficacy Scale, "Self Efficacy Perceptions of Teachers about the Implementation of the Constructivist Approach Scale, and Motivation to Teach Scale. Before analysing the data, the normality of the data was checked with coefficients of skewness and kurtosis. The data were determined to be distributed normally and analyses were performed with parametric methods. For the regression analysis, since the coefficients of skewness and kurtosis regarding the variables were values around ±1 interval, the data were accepted as not deviating more than normal and distributed close to normal. As for VIF values, they were found to be less than 10. It was determined that all assumptions were met, and the analyses were performed. According to the findings: • It was concluded that the self-efficacies of primary school teacher candidates for developing verbal, reading and writing skills differed significantly according to gender, • The self-efficacies of primary school teacher candidates' for developing verbal and writing skills did not differ according to their universities. However, for their self-efficacies for developing reading skills, teacher candidates who enrolled at Akdeniz University statistically significantly differed from the teacher candidates who enrolled at Süleyman Demirel University, • The self-efficacies of primary school teacher candidates' for developing verbal, reading and writing skills significantly differed according to their self-efficacies for applicating constructivist approach, • There was a significant correlation between the self-efficacies of primary school teacher candidates' for developing verbal, reading and writing skills and their self-efficacies for applicating the constructivist approach, • There was a significant correlation between the self-efficacies of primary school teacher candidates' for developing verbal, reading and writing skills and their teaching motivations. • The self-efficacy of primary school teacher candidates' constructivist approach application predicted significantly of their self-efficacies for developing verbal skills, reading skill development. The dimensions which were guiding, activating the student, thinking-encouraging significantly predicted the self-efficacies of teacher candidates for developing writing skills, on the other hand the alternative evaluation dimension of the constructivist approach application did not predict the self-efficacies of teacher candidates for developing writing skills, • The teaching motivation of primary school teacher candidates' significantly predicted their self-efficacies for developing verbal, reading and writing skills. Keywords: developing verbal skills, developing reading skills, developing writing skills,, self-efficacy, teaching motivation, constructivist approach.