Abstract:

This study aims to put forward how teachers and pre-service teachers evaluate themselves regarding "General Competences for Teaching Profession". In addition, the present study sets out to examine whether there is a significant difference between teachers' and pre-service teachers' self-evaluations and whether their evaluation scores differed significantly in terms of various variables. To this end, in this survey design study, data were collected from 275 freshman and senior pre-service teachers at a state university in Turkey and 116 teachers working at different types of schools in the same province through an instrument developed by the researchers based on "General Competences for Teaching Profession" introduced by the Turkish Ministry of National Education. Validity and reliability analyses were carried out for the instrument. Some of the findings include: teachers and pre-service teachers have a high level perception regarding teacher competencies; teachers' scores are significantly higher than pre-service teachers' except for "Approach to Student" dimension; teachers' competency perceptions differ significantly by gender and seniority in some dimensions but not by major, school type or education level; pre-service teachers' competency perceptions do differ by gender but differ by grade level and department variables in some dimensions. Considering that the teacher competencies, revised in 2017, are planned as an important variable in teaching career in Turkey and the limited research on this issue, this study is expected to contribute to the literature.

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