Online Science Education Journal, vol.7, no.2, pp.39-57, 2022 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
This study aims to examine the effects of inquiry-based learning activities on the attitudes of science teacher candidates towards the teaching profession. In line with this main purpose, the attitudes were examined according to gender, willingness to choose the department, the activities in the course, and the level of influence of the course content on the attitude towards the teaching profession. Furthermore, at the end of the lesson, the opinions of the candidates about the activities performed in the lesson were determined. The sample consists of 28 candidates studying in the Department of Science Education of a state university in Ankara in the spring semester of 2017-2018 academic year. Throughout study where a single group pretest-posttest experimental model was used, the Attitude Scale of Teaching Profession and open-ended questionnaire were used as data collection tools. As a result, no statistically significant difference were found between the pretest-posttest attitude score averages of the candidates and the pretest-posttest attitude score averages in terms of gender. A statistically significant difference was found between the posttest attitude score averages in terms of willingly choosing the department and the level of effectiveness of the activities performed in the course on the attitude towards the teaching profession. Furthermore, most of the candidates (n=27) responded as the activities in the lesson and the effect of the course content on the attitude towards the teaching profession had “a positive effect”. They explained this mostly with reasons like learning how teaching works under the theme of Profession, being ready for the profession, feeling like a teacher, etc. In the Process theme, the explanation of the effect of the presentations is the majority.