Teaching knowledge and teacher competencies: a case study of Turkish preservice English teachers

Abstract

What is the relationship between preservice teachers' teaching knowledge and self-rating of competencies and their practicum experience? The participants of this study are fourth year students in the Department of English Language Education of the Faculty of Education, Mu[ g b r e v e ] la University, Turkey. Three data collection instruments were used: the Teaching Knowledge Test (TKT), the Teacher Competency Scale, and an open-ended questionnaire based on the subdimensions of the TKT test. The questionnaire, given to the student teachers at the end of their teaching practicum, aimed to explore the strengths and weaknesses preservice English teachers perceived during their real classroom experiences. The results of the TKT and Teacher Competency Scale showed that student teachers acquired means above the average. However, the qualitative data indicate that the scores obtained were not reflected in their actual classroom teaching.

Sustaining Language Skills Development of Pre-Service EFL Teachers despite the COVID-19 Interruption: A Case of Emergency Distance Education

“…Based upon these premises, there have been numerous studies focusing on skills development for non-native teachers-for instance, the ones concluding that non-native teachers of English feel incompetent about the language proficiency dimension [34,35]. There are studies within the Turkish context focusing on those feelings as well [36]-specifically on speaking skills [37,38] and on the need for more courses for linguistic competence of pre-service EFL teachers [39].…”

Evaluation of an English Language Teacher Education Program from Student Teachers’ Perspectives: A Case from Turkey

“…In the light of the general conclusions drawn above, it can be maintained that teacher candidates feel themselves fairly competent in the three competency areas covered in this study and put forward by CoHE like the participants in Kömür's (2010) study who held an above average perception of their capabilities. So the answer to the first research question would be that student teachers feel themselves "competent" on average in each of the competency areas similar to the participants in Şallı-Çopur's (2008) large-scale study.…”

Re-Visiting the Theory and Practice Gap through the Lens of Student Teacher Dilemmas

“…However, they had to switch to Turkish when teaching which posed itself as a dilemma. In other studies conducted in Turkey (Genc, 2010;Komur, 2010;Tuzel & Akcan, 2009), and elsewhere (Littlewood & Yu, 2011) pre-service teachers have been reported to have experienced similar dilemmas.…”