Öğretmen adaylarının akademik katılımları ile bir kariyer seçimi olarak öğretmenliğe bağlılıkları arasındaki ilişki

This study investigated the relationship between pre-service teachers' academic engagement and their commitment to teaching as a career choice. The study was conducted with 225 pre-service teachers (181 females and 42 males) in the faculty of Education at one of the well-established public universities in Ankara, Turkey. University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI) and the Commitment to Career Choices Scale (CCCS) were administered to collect data. Commitment to Career Choices Scale has two independent constructs including vocational exploration and commitment (VEC) and tendency to foreclose (TTF). Moreover, the demographic information including gender, age, class standing, planning to take the Public Personnel Selection Examination (the KPSS exam), planning to become a teacher, and graduating from a teacher training high school were taken into the analysis. The results of correlation analysis revealed that as pre-service teachers' academic engagement increases, their effort towards career exploration decreases. An independent samples t-test showed that Female pre-service teachers were more engaged than male pre-service teachers. Also, those who have a plan to become a teacher were more engaged than those who do not. Moreover, those who graduated from a teacher training high school had a lower level of engagement than those who did not. Finally, the results of multiple regression analysis revealed that gender and planning to become a teacher predicted academic engagement, class standing predicted vocational exploration and commitment (VEC), and age predicted tendency to foreclose (TTF).