The examination of science teacher candidates attitudes and self- efficacy towards science teaching

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the relationship between attitudes and self- efficacy of science teacher candiadates towards science teaching. This research done by Scanning (Screening) Method has been implemented with 497 participants of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders of Science Teacher Candidates in the Faculty of Education, Primary School Science Teaching Department at Celal Bayar University. The datum in the research has been gained by ''Science Teaching Self- efficacy Belief Scale'' which was firstly generated by Enochs and Rings (1990) and then has been translated into Turkish and has been developed as ''Science Teaching Attitude Scale ''by Özkan, Tekkaya and Çakıroğlu (2002). At the end of the research, while the general attitude points of science teacher candidates varies according to gender, there has not been a significiant difference in Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Labratory which are the sub-branches of scale. While the general attitudes of science teacher candidates towards classroom level shows a significiant difference in general attitude points and sub-branch attitude points towards labratory, it doesn't show any difference according to the other sub-branches of the scale. Morever, it has been found that there is no relationship between the graduated highschool type background and achievements in science teaching attitudes of science teacher candidates. Besides, there is no statistical difference in self- efficacy points, gender, achievement, graduated highschool types of science teacher candidates towards science teaching. However, while the points gained in sub-branches show a significant difference in self efficacy and result expectations of science teacher candidates, it doesn't show any significant difference in the results gained in individual self-efficacy of the scale.Morever, It has been confirmed that there is a positive but very low linear relationship between attitudes and self-efficacy points of science teacher candidates.