Teaching Competency Level Inquiry: Social Studies Teacher Candidates

Abstract

Knowing that the quality of education in a country is proportional to the quality of its teaching staff, it is necessary to attach importance to the education of teacher candidates. It is not possible to ignore the impact of teachers' idealism on their qualifications. Another point that will reveal this idealism is the beliefs that teachers develop regarding their own professional competence. “Will I be a good teacher?” With this question, prospective teachers question their professional competencies, and the answers they give either open or close the path to qualified teaching. This study aims to understand the teaching competence level of social studies teacher candidates; It includes an inquiry into the training of qualified social studies teachers. The study was conducted with 192 Social Studies teacher candidates studying at Gazi University Faculty of Education with a descriptive survey design, one of the quantitative research methods. "Ohio Teacher Competency Scale" adapted to Turkish by Baloğlu and Karadağ (2008) was used to collect research data. In the research, frequency, percentage and arithmetic mean were calculated from descriptive statistical methods, and t test was conducted to examine the difference between groups. According to the research results; The teaching competence level of social studies teacher candidates was determined to be above average in the sub-dimensions of teacher guidance, behavior management, motivating, teaching skills and measurement-evaluation. It was observed that there was no significant difference in the relationship between social studies teacher candidates' teacher competency levels and gender and grade level variables.