Preschool teacher candidates’ self-efficacy beliefs regarding science teaching lesson and opinions about science

Abstract

Researches point out that preschool education has long-term effects over child’s development
and the quality of education given in this term is really important (Evans, 1996; Weikart, 1993; akt, Yavuzer,
2203). One of the main goals of preschool education is to prepare children for elementary school ideally and
during the process of attaining this goal preschool teachers have some important duties. Belief of selfefficacy is defined as someone’s belief of his/her capacity in getting any kind of success (Bandura, 1986).
Studies done on this field showed that self-efficacy beliefs affect teachers’ classroom activities and teacher
who has strong self-efficacy belief, behaves more desirous and ambitious in teaching (Bıkmaz, 2004). By
these points of views, aim of the study was to examine preschool teacher candidates’ self-efficacy beliefs
regarding science teaching lesson by using qualitative and quantitative methods. At the end of the study third
class preschool teacher candidates’ self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectation points were higher
according to the first class preschool teacher candidates and there were significant differences between selfefficacy points in favor of third class preschool teacher candidates. Also, opinions of the teacher candidates
towards science teaching support the results of scale.