Abstract:

One of the possible assignments of primary school teacher candidates is village schools with multi-grade classes. Pre-service teachers receive their first training on teaching in multi-grade classes in undergraduate education. Therefore, their views on undergraduate education are important. It is expected that the views of the primary school teacher pre-service teachers will contribute to the improvement and development of undergraduate education. In this direction, it was aimed to examine the views of pre-service teachers on undergraduate education in term of teaching in multi-grade classes. The research was carried out with a phenomenological design. The 16 teacher candidates in the study group were determined according to the maximum diversity sampling method. The research data were obtained through semi-structured interviews and analyzed by content analysis. According to the results of the research incomplete, insufficient and generally theoretical information is given about the multi-grade classes in undergraduate education. Undergraduate education does not prepare pre-service teachers to be teachers in multi-grade classes, since there is no practice for multi-grade classes in the program. Based on these results, it would be beneficial to visit village schools with multi-grade classes in undergraduate education, to include multi-grade classes in teaching practice, and to add an independent course about combined classrooms to the classroom teaching program.

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