The examination of prospective primary school teachers' proficiency perceptions and attitudes toward teaching Turkish

The aim of the study was to determine the prospective primary school teachers' proficiency perceptions and attitudes toward teaching Turkish and examine them in terms of certain variables. The universe of the research consisted of the prospective teachers who were junior and senior students studying at the Department of Primary Education from four distinct Faculty of Education in three different universities located in the Mediterranean and Southeastern Anatolia Regions in Turkey. Beyond the research, the Attitude towards Turkish Education Instruction Scale and Proficiency in Turkish Instruction Scale were administered to a total of 328 participants reached by simple random sampling method in 2016-2017 academic year. The SPSS 22.0 software package was used in data analysis of the research designed though the correlational survey model and nonparametric tests were applied to the data set which was not normally distributed. According to the research results, the proficiency perceptions of the prospective primary school teachers towards teaching Turkish were found to be high and their attitudes towards teaching Turkish was positive. Furthermore, it was determined that the participants' scores differed significantly according to certain variables and there was a meaningful relationship between the proficiency perceptions and attitudes towards teaching Turkish.