Turkish Prospective Teachers’ Attitudes towards the Teaching Profession: A Meta-Analysis Study

This research aims to explore whether prospective teachers’ attitudes towards the teaching profession vary across demographic characteristics. A meta-analysis has been conducted for the related studies on prospective teachers’ attitudes towards the teaching profession in Turkey. The effect sizes for random effects model have been employed over 103 studies in terms of gender, 26 regarding grade level, 18 for the presence of a teacher in the family, and 11 for the graduated faculties by using Hedges’ g coefficient. Various methods have been utilized in an attempt to examine publication bias in the meta-analysis, such as the funnel plots, Duval and Tweedie's trim and fill method, and Egger's regression test. The findings revealed that prospective teachers’ attitudes towards the teaching profession significantly varied depending on the gender in favor of the females with medium effect while the variables; grade level, the presence of a teacher in the family, and type of faculty, did not significantly change prospective teachers’ attitudes towards teaching profession. This indicates that only the gender variable from the demographic characteristics changes prospective teachers’ attitude towards the teaching profession