A qualitative study for improving the quality of teacher education

The purpose of this study is to determine the suggestions of teacher candidates for the improvement of Teaching Profession Courses (TPC). The study, in which qualitative research method was used, was prepared with phenomenologic method. The study group consists of 190 fourth grade students from Faculty of Technical Education and Faculty of Education of Fırat University in 2010-2011 academic year. The research data were collected through interview forms and content analysis was conducted by using Nvivo8 program. Depending on the findings, the suggestions of teacher candidates for the improvement of TPC was grouped under 11 main themes; course resources, processing of the course, importance of the course, physical media, content, functionality, Public Personnel Selection Examination, materials, instructor, measurement and evaluation, and applications. It was determined that the suggestions of teacher candidates mainly focused on the themes of processing of the course and the instructor. They frequently expressed that lectures should be processed with the adoption of modern approaches such as being student-centered and include visual and different techniques and the instructors should have effective teacher traits. Depending on the findings, some recommendations were developed.

Teacher candidate ,

teaching profession knowledge ,

teacher education ,

teaching staff ,