Factors influencing physical education teachers participation in in-service training programs

The main purpose of this study was to examine factors influencing physical education teachers' participation in in-service training programs. In line with this purpose, the researcher first visited public schools which are associated with Asarcık, Atakum, Ayvacık, Bafra, Canik, Çarşamba, Havza, İlkadım, Tekkeköy, Terme, and Vezirköprü districts of Samsun. Then, the researcher invited 450 teachers who had been working as Physical Education teachers in these schools. However, 414 of them were volunteers to participate in this research. After deleting all missing value (44 surveys had been removed), the researcher reached 370 workable surveys. All collected data had been analyzed by using SPSS 21 packed programme with the respect of Poisson regression. At this point, the researcher found that teachers' personal characteristics such as gender, age, teaching experience, grade level of teaching, education level, teachers' attitudes towards in-service training programs, teachers' self-efficacy, time, funding, principal, colleague influence and school culture affect Physical Education teachers' participation in in-service training programs in statistically significant ways.In the light of these results, the Ministry of National Education should take all necessary steps and provide all essential opportunities in order to increase teachers' participation in in-service training programs. Keywords: Physical education teachers, in-service training, participation