The opinions of primary school teachers’ candidates towards material preparation and usage

Abstract

Instruction materials help students to acquire more memorable information. Instruction materials have an important effect on providing more permanent and simple way of learning in every step of education. Instruction materials are the most frequently used by primary school teachers. Primary school teachers should support their lectures with instruction materials in order to provide permanent learning. The Teaching Technologies and Material Designing (TTMD) course which is one of the compulsory courses that students must take aims to acquire students the information and skills related with the preparation and use of materials. Evaluation of TTMD course is important in terms of the effectiveness of the course which provides the opportunity of motivating the students to learn by attracting their attention, keeping their attentions alive, making abstract concepts more concrete, facilitating the acquisition of knowledge in an organized way in the process of learning and teaching. In this context, it was aimed to determine the opinions of students in the department of primary school teaching about preparation and use of materials through teaching practice which is done within TTMD course in this study. This study is a descriptive study based on qualitative data. The sample of this research included 37 students from the department of primary school teaching who took TTMD course in the second semester in 2014-2015 academic year at Ataturk Education Faculty of Near East University or students who took this course in previous academic years. The data of this research were collected with structured interview form. According to the results, it was revealed that primary school teachers’ candidates attach importance to prepare and use materials based on their answers about the use and preparation of materials in instruction. When the opinions of primary school teachers candidates about the criteria that they give value in preparing and using materials, it was figured out that they emphasize the criteria such as suitability for student level, suitability for aim, simplicity and easy comprehensibility. Furthermore, the results indicated that primary school teachers’ candidates mostly experience difficulty in finding suitable materials and tools for the aim. It was also revealed that the majority of primary school teachers’ candidates stated that they will use materials and a few of them indicated that they will not use materials since they find materials as insufficient based on their answers about the question asking if they will use the materials which they prepared in TTMD course when they begin teaching profession. Keywords: primary school, primary teaching candidates, teaching technologies and material designing (TTMD) course, material design, instruction materials