Abstract:

The objective of this study is to investigate pre-service pre-school teachers' problem solving perceptions and orientations. 224 pre-service preschool teachers from different grade levels participated in the study. The current study employed a convergent parallel mixed methods design. As data collection method, written documents were used to collect the qualitative data and "Problem Orientation Scale" was used to gather quantitative data. The pre-service teachers were asked to complete the phrase: "Daily life problems are like ......., because it is ......." The qualitative data obtained were evaluated via content analysis method. The qualitative data were based on negative and positive themes with respect to the "Social Problem Solving Model". The frequencies of the themes were taken. In attempt to analyze the quantitative data, the average scores of the pre-service teachers on the "Problem Orientation Scale" were calculated and subsequently analyzed to determine whether there was any statistically significant relationship between the scores. The research findings revealed that the proportion of metaphors showing positive meaning were higher than the metaphors showing negative meaning. The Problem Orientation Scale scores of the pre-service teachers who produced positive metaphors were higher than the pre-service teachers who produced negative metaphors. The scores of the pre-service teachers who produced positive metaphors were found to be statistically significant when compared to the scores of the pre-service teachers who produced negative metaphors.

Keywords:

Abstract:

The objective of this study is to investigate pre-service preschool teachers’ problem solving perceptions and orientations. 224 pre-service preschool teachers from different grade levels participated in the study. The current study employed a convergent parallel mixed methods design. As data collection method, written documents were used to collect the qualitative data and “Problem Orientation Scale” was used to gather quantitative data. The pre-service teachers were asked to complete the sentence: “Daily life problems are like ……., because it is …….” The qualitative data obtained were evaluated via content analysis method. The qualitative data were based on negative and positive themes with respect to the “Social Problem Solving Model”. The frequencies of the themes were taken. In attempt to analyze the quantitative data, the mean scores of the pre-service teachers on the “Problem Orientation Scale” were calculated and subsequently analyzed to determine whether there was any statistically significant relationship between the scores. The research findings revealed that the proportion of metaphors showing positive meaning were higher than the metaphors showing negative meaning. The Problem Orientation Scale scores of the pre-service teachers who produced positive metaphors were higher than the pre-service teachers who produced negative metaphors. The scores of the pre-service teachers who produced positive metaphors were found to be statistically significant when compared to the scores of the pre-service teachers who produced negative metaphors.