Investigation of mathematics and scienceteaching anxiety of elementary teacher candidates

The aim of this study is to investigate the factors that are effective on the anxiety of mathematics and science teaching of elementary teacher candidates. For this purpose, mix method which includes quantitative and qualitative research techniques was used.The scale used in the study was developed by Liu (2016) and adapted to Turkish by Aytekin, Türkmenoğlu and Arıkan (2017).The adaptation of the scale was made with the data obtained from 259 teacher candidates enrolled in the Elementary School Mathematics and Science Education program of a public university in Central Anatolia.The validity and reliability analyzes of the scale were performed with SPSS 20.0 and Lisrel 8.80 package programs.Personal Information Form and the teaching mathematics and science anxiety scale which was formed by the researchers and the scale adapted to Turkish were applied to 114 teacher candidates who were enrolled in the Elementary Teaching program.After data were collected, SPSS 20.0 package program was used for data analysis.In the qualitative part of the study, among the 114 participants whose anxiety levels were high, medium and low, 15 pre-service teachers participated in the study voluntarily. The interviews were conducted with semi-structured questions prepared by the expert opinion and literature.These interviews were taken to the voice recorder and were documented and analyzed by two independent researchers.When the findings obtained from the research were examined, it was seen that the elementary teacher candidates who stated that they had less participation in scientific activities experienced higher mathematics and science teaching anxiety. Besides, as the levelof mathematics and science enjoyment of the elementary teacher candidates increased, the teaching anxiety decreased.Another result is that science teacher anxieties vary according to the reasons of choosing science education.As a result of interviews with prospective teachers, it has been suggested to increase the duration of teaching experience.Candidates need to be given more teaching experience within the scope of teaching practice.Strong cooperation is essential to achieve these goals.