Comparison of pre-school teacher training programs in Turkey and Germany in the context of mathematics education

This study is intended to compare pre-school teacher training programs in Turkey and Germany in terms of entry requirements, training time, professional appointment process and in terms of mathematics education. Due to the nature of comparative studies documents were obtained from two different sources of data and descriptive analysis was conducted. In the stage of data collection, printed resources such as books, magazines and scientific articles, which provide insights into the existing practices about teacher training in Germany and Turkey were used. According to the comparative findings, it seems that Germany is stricter than Turkey in terms requirements to the institution in which pre-school teachers are trained and more selective than Turkey with regard to the student profile and the conditions imposed for entry. In terms of training time, Content and graduation requirements both country programs are content knowledge based. The training time of the teacher training programs in both countries is almost similar. However, in terms of graduation conditions, pre-service teachers in Germany are graduated from all three training programs and are officially recognized as pre-school teachers by the state. On the other hand, the appointment of the professional conditions in both countries appear to be different from each other. Teacher candidates in Turkey are determined to go through many processes to be appointed as a noble teacher. But it was investigated that Germany doesn't act as selective as Turkey and at the same time, doesn't present so many opportunities. It is seen that teacher candidates in Turkey have less time and opportunity in terms of mathematics education compared to the three teacher programs in Germany.