The perceptions of Atatürk among the pre-service social studies and classroom teachers

The aim of this study is to determine the perceptions of Atatürk among the prospective social studies and form teachers who are expected to assume the responsibility of teaching about Atatürk and Atatürkism. The population of this cross-sectional descriptive survey was made up of the pre-service teachers in the 3rd and 4th grades of social studies and form/classroom teaching at Ahi Evran, Bozok, Necmettin Erbakan, Gazi and Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli universities in 2018-2019 academic year. The sample of the study consists of 795 pre-service teachers studying in the departments of social studies and form/classroom teaching in the 3rd and 4th grade at Ahi Evran, Bozok, Necmettin Erbakan, Gazi and Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli Universities. Within the scope of the research, "Atatürk perception scale" developed by Dönmez and Hamarat (2014) was used to determine the perceptions of Atatürk among the pre-service social studies and form/classroom teachers. SPSS 25.00 (Stastical Package For Social Sciences) package program was used for data analysis. Frequency (f), percentage (%), arithmetic mean (x̄) and standard deviation (SD) distributions and single level t test were calculated to analyse the obtained data and to determine the perception levels of pre-service teachers. Regarding the comparison of multiple variables, whether the data showed a normal distribution was examined by the Kolmogorov Smirnov normality test, whereas Mann-Whitney U test was used in two-variable comparisons and Kruskal-Wallis H test in three and more variables. The results of the research can be summarized as follows: The level of perceptions towards Atatürk among the social studies and form teacher candidates is found to be averagely "fair" with an arithmetic mean of 4.12. It is understood that the pre-service teachers "strongly agreed" with 15 of the 32 questions and "somewhat agreed" with the remaining 17 questions on the data collection tool. It is therefore concluded that pre-service social studies and form teachers have a positively high level of perception towards Atatürk. It is another result of the research that the perceptions in question did not differ according to gender, the department they study in, their satisfaction with the department they study in, and the order of choosing the university they receive education. The perceptions of Atatürk differed according to the grade and this difference is in favour of the prospective teachers studying in the 4th grade. It is also found that the perceptions of Atatürk among the pre-service social studies and form/classroom teachers differed according to the university in which the candidates receive education. Keywords: Atatürk, perception of Atatürk, social studies, pre-service teachers