The Effects of Possible Selves of Teacher Candidates’ on their Teaching Motivation

The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between teacher possible selves and teaching motivation according to the perceptions of teacher candidates’. The study, designed as a correlational research, has a total of 316 undergraduate students (255 female and 61 male) studying at a state university in Ankara. The data were collected through spring semester of 2016-2017 academic year. The data was collected by “New Teacher Possible Selves Questionnaire” consists of two sub-scales called “Expected Possible Teacher Selves” and “Feared Possible Teacher Selves” developed by Hamman, Wang and Burley (2013) and adapted to Turkish by Tatl？-Dalio？lu and Ad？güzel (2015) and “Teaching Motivation Scale” developed by Kauffman, Soylu and Duke (2011) and adapted into Turkish by Ay？k, Akdemir and Se？er (2015). The construct validity of the scales used within the study was tested by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and as for the internal reliability, Cronbach alpha coefficients were calculated. The data were analyzed by utilizing Pearson correlation and multiple linear regression. The findings were revealed that while the relationship between expected teacher possible selves and internal motivations of teacher candidates is moderate and the relationship between external motivations is low, there is a low level of relationship between the feared teacher possible selves and internal motivations of teacher candidates but there is no significant relationship with external motivation. It was also seen that possible selves of teacher candidates’ is a statistically significant predictor of their internal and external teaching motivations