Pre-service teachers' attitudes towards gender roles and teaching profession

Teachers are the most important representatives of the education factor that is effective in the development of society. Having a positive attitude towards their profession will increase their professional success and will support their students' learning environment positively. The power that societies need for development will be possible if women and men are included in life equally. In the light of this idea, this study aimed to identify the preservice teachers' attitudes towards gender roles and teaching profession to determine whether there were significant relationships in preservice teachers' attitudes towards gender roles and their teaching profession levels. This study utilized the relational screening model. Data related to this research were obtained from 600 preservice teachers who studied Pedagogical Formation at Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University in 2017-2018 academic year. Quantitative data for this study were collected via Gender Roles Attitude Scale developed by Zeyneloğlu ve Terzioğlu (2011), Attitude Scale of Teaching Profession by Üstüner (2006). Arithmetic mean, standard deviation Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis H test and Spearman Correlation Test were used as descriptive statistics in data analysis According to the results of data analysis, preservice teachers' attitudes towards gender roles shows differences according to "sex" variable in favor of women was found. The attitudes of pre-service teachers about gender roles did not differ significantly in the total and sub-dimensions of the scale according to the "marital status" variable. A statistically significant difference was found between the averages of the groups in the total scale and gender role in marriage sub-dimension of the attitudes of gender roles scale according to the "geographical region in which they grown up" variable. A statistically significant difference was found between the averages of the groups in the total and sub-dimensions of the scale according to the "city in which they grown up" variable in favor of city group. The pre-service teachers' attitudes towards teaching profession did not differ significantly according to the "sex", "geographical region in which they grown up", and "the settlement type in which they grown up" variables. A statistically significant difference was found between the averages of the groups according to "marital status" variable in favor of married participants. A positive low-level relationship was found between the preservice teachers' attitudes towards gender roles and attitudes towards teaching profession and, egalitarian gender role, gender role in marriage, and attitudes towards male gender role sub-dimensions.