Achievement level of teacher education program standards in faculties of education

The studies regarding increasing quality and productivity in teacher education since 1980 all over the world have influenced Turkey as well. In 1982 the institutions training teachers for all grades of education have been gathered together under the umbrella of university. Thus; the statute of teaching profession has been ascended and academic educations for teacher trainers have been provided. However, in the course of time, the education faculties, which were assigned to train teachers, made the education more and more academic and they ignored the teaching profession skill and knowledge which teachers are supposed to use in the schools. Therefore, the restructuring in teacher education was accepted with the Higher Education Council?s decision numbered as 97.39.2761 in 4.11.1997 and this model has been put into practice since 1998-1999 academic years in order to achieve the goals of modern education, to compensate the teacher deficit and to train teachers that can increase the quality of education.The main goal of restructuring in teacher education is to train qualified teachers in Turkey like in other application samples in the world by developing the standards of teacher education program. The desired change, improvement and renovation in the society oblige the development of the teacher education program standards, which can enable the training of qualified teachers. Due to this obligation, the Higher Education Council developed the teacher education program standards with the purpose of accreditation in the context of restructuring in teacher education and provided necessary arrangements in order to accreditate the education faculties up to these standards.However, since the development of these standards, there have not enough studies been conducted to determine the achievement level of these standards in education faculties. Thus, there is a need to determine the achievement level of teacher education standards in education faculties. Referring to this need, the present study is designed to determine the achievement level of teacher education program standards in education faculties and the suggestions regarding development of these standards in education faculties, and the problems encountered while developing these standards, on the basis of academic staffs? opinions. This study was designed with survey research method. The population of this study consisted of academic teaching members who did not participate in the pilot study and worked in 50 education faculties in 2006-2007 academic years in fall term. Since to reach all 3272 academic teaching members working in 50 education faculties would not be possible economically, sampling out of this population was determined. The proportional sampling method in which all members in sub-population have equal selection chance was used and to reach %30 of all academic teaching members in each faculty was intended. Thus, out of 982 academic teaching members in the population, 708 of them (%74) was included. Furthermore, the data for this study was collected through a questionnaire titled as ?Achievement Level of Teacher Education Program Standards in Education Faculties?. While analyzing the data, numbers, percentages, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, and Tukey HSD was applied. According to the results of the study, it was found that the achievement level of teacher education program standards in the education faculties up to standard domains were moderately adequate. The results indicated that a significant difference between the administrators and academic teaching members? opinions regarding the achievement levels of teacher education program standards in education faculties differed in terms of ?teaching planning, application and evaluation?, ?academic teaching members? and ?administration? was detected and the achievement levels related to these domains were higher according to the administrators. On the other hand there was no difference detected between the academic teaching members and administrators? opinions related to the achievement levels of standards about ?students?, ?facilities, libraries and equipment?, ?quality assurance? and ?faculty-school cooperation?.Furthermore, it was obtained that the achievement level of teacher education program standards differed significantly in terms of standard domains. Accordingly, theregarding ?faculty-school cooperation? standards were fulfilled adequately, standrds regarding ?teaching planning, application and evaluation?, ?academic teaching members?, ?students?, ?facilities, libraries and equipment? and ?administration? were moderately adequate. Additionaly, ?quality assurance? standards were inadequate. It was found that the academic teaching members? opinions regarding the achievement level of standards differed significantly according to the development level of the faculty, thus it was observed that the achievement level of the standards in the developed education faculties was higher than the semi-developed and underdeveloped faculties. On the other hand, achievement level of the standards in underdeveloped faculties was higher than the semi-developed faculties.