A research on the perception of teacher competency of preschool teacher candidates

Occupational competencies of teachers have vital importance in preschool education as in the all other stages of the education. In this respect, the research aims to determine occupational competencies of preschool teacher candidates who are educated in education faculty preschool department. In the research in this frame, a survey was conducted on 147 students of Kars Kafkas University Faculty of Education Preschool Department. In this descriptive survey modeled research, demographic information form and "Teacher Competencies Scale" including eight factors as "Student Recognition", "Learning Teaching", "Following Development", "Environmental Relations", "Program Content", "Area Knowledge", "Self Development" and "International Values" were applied. In addition, a total of 20 students were subjected to deep interview with semi conducted questions. According to results of the study, area knowledge and learning-teaching areas were less sufficient areas of students, whereas international values and environmental relations were the most sufficient areas. There were statistically significant differences for all teacher competencies based on class of students (p<0,05). Self development and environmental relations were higher in the first class students, and all other competency areas were higher in the fourth class students. According to different classes, all competency factors did not show statistically significant differences based on demographic properties for all classes (p>0,05). In general, all points of competencies were over mean values for all teacher candidates.