Abstract:

In this research, it is aimed to determine teacher educators' perceptions of accreditation and to reveal their opinions on accreditation in teacher education. The research was designed in a mixed-methods research and convergent parallel design. 177 teacher educators who were determined according to simple random sampling participated in the quantitative part of the research. 12 teacher educators who were determined through convenience sampling were included in the qualitative part. In order to collect quantitative data, Accreditation Perception Scale was used. Qualitative data were collected by using interview form. The analysis of the quantitative research data was carried out by the SPSS analysis program. For the qualitative data analysis, descriptive analysis was used. Based on the findings obtained, quantitative and quality findings were presented. Considering quantitative findings, teacher educators' perceptions of accreditation do not differ according to department, title and professional seniority. Based on qualitative findings, the opinions of teachers educators were collected under three subtitles. These are the purposes of accreditation in teacher education, the benefits of accreditation in teacher education and the evaluation of accreditation studies in teacher education. The purposes of accreditation in teacher education; enhancing the quality of education, transparency and accountability of education programs, increasing the competitiveness in education. The benefits of accreditation in teacher education are; ensuring continuous assessment of teacher education, increasing the mobility between programs, improving the recognition of institutions. For the evaluation of accreditation studies in teacher education; carrying out more research on accreditation, organizing more training on accreditation and increasing cooperation with other institutions for the accreditation process. Findings were presented in tables based on the subproblems of the research and supported with direct quotations.

Keywords: