An Examination of the relationship among self - efficacy beliefs, attitudes towards teaching profession and anxiety levels of teacher candidates in teaching certificate program

The aim of this study is to examine self-efficacy beliefs, attitudes and anxiety levels of teacher candidates towards teaching profession who participate in Pedagogical Formation Education Certificate Program (PFECP). In the study primarily the reason of vocational choices, self-efficacy beliefs, attitudes and anxiety levels of teacher candidates were aimed to determine. Later on, it was aimed to determine whether self-efficacy beliefs, attitudes and anxiety levels of teacher candidates differ according to variables like gender, age and Faculties/Colleges being studied or graduated and finally it was aimed to determine whether there is a meaningful relationship among self-efficacy beliefs, attitudes and anxiety levels of teacher candidates. Individual and relational survey model, one of the quantitative research methods was used in the study. Data was collected from teacher candidates participated in Akdeniz University PFECP in the 2014-2015academic year, fall and spring semesters. During data collection "Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale" developed by Tschannen-Moran and Hoy(2001) and adapted to Turkish by Çapa, Çakıroğlu and Sarıkaya, (2005), "Attitude Scale towards Teaching Profession" developed by Üstüner (2006) and "Anxiety Scale for the Teacher Candidate towards Teacher Profession " developed by Cabı and Yalçınalp (2009) were used. In the study IBM SPSS Statistics 21 was used for data analysis and descriptive analysis of the data was carried out according to values of frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. Comparison of self-efficacy beliefs, attitudes and anxiety levels of teacher candidates according to "Gender" variable was carried out by Independent samples t-test analysis and "Age" and "Faculties/Colleges being studied or graduated" variables by One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Moreover the determination of the direction and level of relations was carried out by applying multiple correlation analysis. According to the findings obtained from the study many of the teacher candidates participated in PFECP prefer teaching profession because of working conditions and having a state guaranteed job. It was found out that teacher candidates seem to have high level of self-efficacy in the findings related to the level of self-efficacy belief and independent variables such as age and gender seem to be effective on self-efficacy beliefs but the variable of faculty/college type graduated seems no effect on self-efficacy belief. While teacher candidates seem to have high level attitudes towards profession, the variables of gender and faculty/college type graduated/studied seem to have no effect on the attitude scores of teacher candidates but it differs significant in terms of age variable. While anxiety of teacher candidates towards profession was found out low in the findings of anxiety level, the variables of gender, age and faculty/college type graduated/studied was found not to have significant effect on anxiety level of teacher candidates. With the help of findings obtained from the study it could be said that self-efficacy beliefs and attitudes of teacher candidates towards teaching profession affect their anxiety levels and it decreases depending on the increase in self-efficacy beliefs and attitudes towards teaching profession.