The effect of personality traits and life skills of physical education and sports teacher candidates on pre-professional teacher identity

The Effect of Personality Traits and Life Skills of Physical Education and Sports Teacher Candidates on Pre-professional Teacher Identity This research was conducted to investigate the effects of personality traits and life skills of physical education and sports teacher candidates studying in Physical Education and Sports Schools and Sports Sciences Faculties on the formation of teacher identity. The research was carried out with the quantitative research method and the relational survey model was used. The universe of the research consists of students who receive sports education in Physical Education and Sports Schools and Sports Sciences Faculties in Turkey. The sample group consists of a total of 622 people from seven regions of Turkey who received sports training from a university from each region and participated in the study by random sampling method. "Life Skills Scale", "Pre- Professional Teacher Identity Scale", "Five Factor Personality Scale" and personal information form were used as data collection tools. The data were made in SPSS 22.0 program. The level of significance was taken as (p<0.05) for all tests. "Independent Sample t-Test" for dependent groups and "One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)" were used in order to reveal whether the research group differed according to the variables, and the "TUKEY" test was used to reveal where the difference originated. In order to examine the relationship between the sub-dimensions of the scales used in the research, the correlation and the regression test were used to examine the effect between the scales. When the result of the study is evaluated in general terms, there are positive significant relationships between "Five Factor Personality Scale", "Pre- Professional Teacher Identity Scale" and "Life Skills Scale". In other words, it has been concluded that as the life skills of the participants increase, their pre-professional identity and personality traits will also increase positively. "Empathy and Self-Awareness" and "Communication and Interpersonal Relationship" were found to be significantly effective in explaining Pre-professional Teacher Identity. The sub-dimensions of "extraversion", "self-discipline", "agreeableness", "openness to experience" of personality traits were found to be significantly effective in explaining Pre- Professional Teacher Identity. However, the "neuroticism" sub-dimension could not adequately explain the identity of the teacher. Keywords: Sports, Physical Education, Life Skills, Personality Traits, Teacher Identity