Opinions of early childhood education teacher candidates towards the profession

Abstract

The qualifications of early childhood teachers have a great importance as they are the people whom little children share most of their time apart from their parents. Therefore early childhood teachers have quite an important mission. Moving from this point this study aimed at obtaining the candidates’ opinions about the field of early childhood education as a profession. A qualitative research was designed and a semi-structured interview was performed with early childhood teacher candidates all of whom were studying at a foundation university in Turkey. The candidates were from the second, third and the fourth year. Volunteers were asked questions in order to reveal their opinions about the profession such as, the characteristics of the profession, positive and negative sides of the profession or the conditions of the profession. The interviews were decoded by the researcher and the collected data was analyzed by using descriptive statistics. Although the perception of the job was negative in society and the salaries were not satisfactory the results showed that the candidates were dedicated towards their profession. They preferred moral satisfaction more than money. 
 
Keywords: Early childhood education, teacher candidates, opinions about profession.