Türkiye'deki İngilizce öğretmen adaylarına yönelik öğretmen alan bilgisi testi üzerine bir değerlendirme

Teacher candidates in Turkey in order to be appointed to and work at state schools as English language teachers have to take Public Personnel Selection Test (PPST) and Teacher Domain-Specific Knowledge Test (TDSKT) and attend an interview which is compulsory. After getting passing scores of these tests and interview only they are appointed as teachers. Although this process is fundamentally important to shape the teaching force, the number of research on this issue is scarce. This study aims to present an evaluation of TDSKT by a mixed method research approach. In order to gather qualitative data for the research, eight experts were consulted and they were asked to share their opinions on TDSKT emphasizing this particular test's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) and provided the qualitative data for this study. Some of the experts were interviewed and some of them who were not available at that time were asked to fill in an expert opinion form which was designed by the researcher according to SWOT. According to what the experts indicated, the themes were created and frequencies of their opinions were determined. Later on, codes were created related to these themes and a questionnaire was developed in order to gather the quantitative data. The instrument which was developed and based on SWOT analysis was piloted with prospective English teachers (N= 92) at a state university. The instrument contained 35 items and the internal consistency of the instrument was assessed via the Cronbach's alpha coefficient and the analysis showed a high level of reliability (α=0.80). Later on, in order to gather prospective English teachers' opinions on TDSKT, a larger group of teacher candidates (N= 275) who were planning to take TDSKT participated in the study voluntarily by answering the questionnaire. The results indicate that although the participants believe in the necessity of TDSKT and appreciate the effectiveness of TDSKT in terms of evaluating their theoretical knowledge and being a standardized tool to assess their knowledge, they still have doubts about its content validity and they are of the opinion that TDSKT ignores the practice part of teaching and their teaching skills.