The Evaluation of Prospective Teachers' Attitudes towards Citizenship and Citizenship Education

This study aims to determine the attitudes of prospective teachers studying pedagogical formation education towards citizenship and citizenship education based on their gender, area of specialization, ethnicity and geographical area. This study explains the global implications of the concepts of citizenship, and citizenship education. A quantitative approach using questionnaire survey was adopted for this study. The sample of the study consists of 460 prospective teachers. They were selected from 1000 prospective teachers studying pedagogical formation education in 2016 to 2017 academic year, with maximum variation sampling method. For data collection, patriotism attitude scale and patriotism education scale were used. Patriotism attitude scale involves ''blind citizenship'' and ''constructive citizenship'' while patriotism education scale involves a single dimension. The data collected were analysed with independent sample t test, one way Anova, least significant difference (LSD), Bonferonni, Dunnett's C as well as mean, and standard deviation. The investigation revealed that there was a significant difference in the attitudes of the prospective teachers towards citizenship and citizenship education based on their area of specialization and ethnicity, but there was no difference in their attitude in relation to their gender and geographical location. In other words, the conclusion drawn is "gender" and "geographical area" variables did not play a crucial role in the formation of prospective teachers' attitudes towards citizenship (either blind citizenship or constructive citizenship), and towards citizenship education; although "ethnicity" and "major" variables played an important role in their attitudes towards citizenship and citizenship education. On one hand, those who called themselves Kurds and those who called themselves Turks had different understanding of citizenship and citizenship education. On the other hand, those that participated in the pedagogical formation program from natural sciences departments and those that participated in the program from humanities departments had a distinct understanding about citizenship and citizenship education.