Some improvements have undergone in Turkey's approach towards differences since 2000s especially within the framework of adaptation into European Union. This change effected educational policies, and obstructions to right demands of different ethnic groups and religious education were removed largely. However, teacher's characteristics should reflect this change so that it could be permanent and meaningful. The aim of this study was to reveal preservice teachers' attitudes towards identity differences. Identity Attitudes Scale (IAS), which was developed by Yazıcı (2016) to measure the attitudes towards identity differences, was conducted on 506 preservice teachers. Preservice teachers' attitudes towards identity differences in terms of gender, social environment, grade level, curriculum, and their ethnic, religious and political identities were examined using t-test, one-way variance analysis, and correlation analysis. As a result, it was found that the variables had effect on preservice teachers' attitudes at varying rates. Moreover, it was concluded that education faculties in Turkey weren't able to catch up with the changes on identity differences since the undergraduate education had slight effect on preservice teachers' attitudes.© 2017 IOJES. All rights reserved Keywords: 1 Identity, diversity, attitude, preservice teacher, teacher education
Extended SummaryTurkey is a country with various identities since it has the inheritance of an empire. The number of Syrian refugees has been increasing lately, and their participation in education system makes it difficult to solve education problems in a traditional way. Moreover, different religious, denominational, and gender identities place increased demands on education, diversifying the expectations from education (Çayır, 2014). Significant advancements in rights associated with different cultural and religious identities have been made in the last decade in education system of Turkey, which tries to overcome these issues.Although daily political discussions or extraordinary conditions sometimes overshadow the efforts of embracing identity differences in Turkey, positive changes are also observed. The educational system is unable to catch up with this improvement; however, the nation-building reflexes do not appear to affect the field of education any longer. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that teachers' attitudes are important for making the values of respecting different identities in education permanent and compatible with democratic values. The aim of this study is to reveal the preservice teachers' attitudes towards identity differences. Within this scope, the research questions are as follows: Do the preservice teachers' attitudes towards identical diversity differ in terms of gender? Do the preservice teachers' attitudes towards identical diversity differ in terms of their social environment? Do the preservice teachers' attitudes towards identical diversity differ in terms of their grade level?