Evaluation of teacher trainees’ career expectations in terms of various variables

Abstract

This study seeks to evaluate teacher trainees’ career expectations in terms of gender, age, parental living status, place of birth and marital status. A mixed model was used in the study. The population of the study is comprised of students of the Siirt University Faculty of Education, while the sample for the quantitative research and qualitative research is comprised of 283 students and 30 volunteers, respectively. The career planning questionnaire (Minaz, 2019) and the semi-structured interview questions developed by the researcher were used to collect data. As a result of the study, it was found that there was a statistically significant difference between the career plans according to variables such as the students’ department and grade point average (GPA), that the career planning levels of the students at the Social Sciences Department were lower than the students studying in the other departments, and that the students with GPA between 71 and 80 had a higher career planning score. According to the content analysis results of qualitative findings, it was determined that the students did not do enough research when choosing this department while those who did failed to search in detail and that the students were placed into universities only based on their scores. More than half of the students stated that they are in the department in which they can use their skills. Finally, teacher trainees stated that they are aware of the difficult and easy aspects of their profession while the students expressed that they fail to keep up with the innovations in the field because of the everincreasing information