Prospective teachers’ temperament, character, and personality traits

Career choices of individuals reflect personality traits to a great extend. This is also true for prospective teachers. In other words, prospective teachers' career choices are expected to match with their personality traits. The aim of this study is to examine the differences between temperament, character and identity of the prospective teachers according to gender and their chosen fields of study. The sample of the study consisted of a total of 255 student teachers attending the first year of teacher education during the curriculum year of 2008-2009 at Dokuz Eylül University. The findings of the study showed that female students had the tendency to be more cooperative, reward dependent and harm avoidant as compared to male students. There were no significant gender differences in terms of personal, social and collective identity. It was found that, temperament and characters such as novelty seeking harm avoidance and selfdirectedness differed significantly in terms of students' chosen fields of teaching. There were also significant differences in personal and collective identity in terms of chosen fields. No differences were found for social identity regarding chosen fields of teaching.

Teacher Candidate ,

Temperament ,

Character ,

Identity ,