The Candidate Teachers’ Views On Teacher Education Systems In Turkey, USA, and Finland and Their Recommendations For Improving System In Turkey

The school reforms and improving quality of education efforts have concentrated on teachers and education programs since 1990’s.. Considering the others, except the student’s personal characteristics, the most important share in the success is belonging to teachers. The researches point out that the genetic characteristics of the student have 50 %, the teacher has 30 % share in academic success. This result shows us that the main investment area of education is teacher. In this research, it is aimed to bring some recommendations for Turkish teacher education system while having candidate teachers’ views on Turkish and the developed countries’ teacher education systems. The research group was selected from senior students of Hacettepe University, Faculty of Education. The “open-ended written questionnaire” was used to collect data. In this study, the candidate teachers were given some basic facts about Turkish, USA, and Finland teacher education subsystems and were asked to write their opinion and proposals as free text thanks to taking advantage of given information to improve Turkish teacher education system. These subsystems are “university entry requirements”, “education period”, “program coverage”, “school experience and teaching practice”, “teacher competencies”, and “student evaluation system”. As a result of analysis of data and evaluation by using descriptive analysis techniques, some proposals have been brought to the agenda based on the opinions and proposals of candidate teachers. In this context, it can be said that written test is not well enough to enter the university. The system should also cover candidate’s individual interview, attitude tests, and high school recommendation letters. Another opinion is education period should be extended by covering master degree. It is proposed to give much importance on practical issues during education period. It is evaulated that the school experience and teaching practice should begin earlier and duration should be extended. Turkey’s current teacher competencies are evaluated as well enough, but practicing is not sufficient and it must be supported by an appropriate measuring system has come to the fore. Another point is evaluation system is not enough, in addition to written exams, training and implementation of common school studies for evaluation of the results of the regulation would be appropriate for consideration on the agenda were proposed.