Investigation of gender role attitudes of early childhood and elementry education teacher candidates in terms of different variables

Social gender inequailty is a worldwide problem which differs in terms of extent. Especially teachers have important responsibilities regarding childrens's awareness of social gender equality issues. Therefore, in the current study it is aimed to examine gender role attitudes of preschool teacher candidates and primary school tacher candidates with respect to different variables. For this purpose, cross-sectional survey modelling is carried out with a sample of freshman (1st year) and final year(4th year) undergraduate students studying in the Preschool and Primary School Teaching Programs at a state university in Anatolia. The data was collected through Personel Knowledge Form and Gender Roles Attitude Scale (GRAS). Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests were run and also effect size was calculated. The results of the current study revealed that most of the teacher candidates scored high on overall scale. The results indicated that there was a significant difference between groups on total score of GRAS's and sub-dimesions' scores on teacher candidates' gender, age, the type of the program they registered, educational status of their mother and the type of accomodation during high school. On the other hand, no significant difference was observed regarding the teacher candidates' place of birth, residential area, educational status of their father, occupation type of mother, occupation type of father and gender of sibling. In accordance with the results of the current study, several suggestions are offered for educational policies and for future researchers. Keywords: Gender Role Attitudes, Early Childhood Education, Preschool Education, Pre-service Teachers, Primary School Teaching.