Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
7 th International Conference on Lifelong Education and Leadership for All ICLEL 2021, Sarajevo, Bosna-Hersek, 24 - 26 Ağustos 2021, ss.76
Teachers have important duties to prepare students for the life they will live as well-equipped, personal and responsible individuals. It is stated in various studies that today's students, who are referred to as the learners of the digital age do not like traditional teaching methods, find written texts boring, and generally prefer multimedia materials such as pictures, sound, animation and video to obtain information. In this context, teacher candidates should also have high knowledge, skills and equipment in this field. Having 21st century skills, exhibiting effective classroom management, being able to use educational technologies, establishing interdisciplinary relations, making process-oriented measurement and evaluation, presenting values education with activities and using modern teaching techniques are now inevitable for efficiency in education. It is not possible for a teacher candidate to acquire all these skills only through formal education. In addition to formal education, his individual efforts and research, his participation in-group activities and the support of non-governmental organizations have become mandatory. This research is based on the results of a series of training activities and workshops for teacher candidates within the scope of the “Future Teachers Project”. In the nine-month project, teacher candidates voluntarily participated in activities that would contribute to their professional development in addition to the education they received at the university. The research, in which the quantitative method was applied, was conducted with 174 teacher candidates studying in different departments of universities in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 2021. As a data collection tool in the research, the “Readiness to Be a Teacher Scale” developed by Yıldırım and Kalman (2017) and the “21st Century Learner Skills Usage Scale” developed by Göksun (2016) was used. The application of the research was carried out twice -pretest and posttest- at the beginning of the project and at the end of the project. Thus, it was tried to determine to what extent the activities carried out within the scope of the project affected the level of teacher candidates' use of 21st century skills and their readiness for teaching. According to the pre-test results of the study, it was determined that the teacher candidates' level of readiness for teaching in terms of creating an effective learning environment, designing the teaching process, technopedagogical competence and understanding the learner was at a moderate level. It has been determined that they have a medium level of readiness in the use of autonomous skills, among the 21st century skills, and a high level of readiness in the use of cognitive skills, the use of innovative skills, and the use of cooperation and flexibility skills. In addition, it was determined that the technopedagogical competence, understanding of the learner and autonomous skills of the teacher candidates who participated in professional development activities other than formal education before this project were significantly higher than those who did not participate. In the context of these results, it can be suggested that teacher candidates participate in activities that will improve themselves in different dimensions of the teaching profession in addition to the formation courses they take at the university.