Yabancılara Türkçe Öğretiminde Öğreticilerin Pedagojik Yeterliklerine Yönelik Bir İnceleme

Abstract

Today although it is believed that the learner is at the center of the educational processes, the one who shapes both the learner and the process is the teacher. The success of the teacher in the teaching process is directly proportional to his/her competencies and self-efficacy. When the competence of the teacher is considered, as in all types and stages of education, in teaching Turkish as a second/foreign language, the teacher/instructor must have the mastery of some fields of knowledge and competencies to fulfill a profession with high responsibility. Within the scope of this study, these competencies and knowledge areas were explained by showing sensitivity to conceptual differences such as the teacher/instructor and second/foreign language. Since the study focuses on the pedagogical competence and self-efficacy level of the instructors, both qualitative and quantitative data were collected under two separate titles, and the data were collected and analyzed by convergent parallel mixed method. Since there were no pedagogical competence definitions specific to the field and tools to measure competence and self-efficacy in order to carry out this examination, appropriate tools were developed and data were collected. Then, the data were analyzed using the SPSS 25.0 program. After analyzing the qualitative data, they were quantified and compared using a rubric. These definitions and conceptualizations specific to the field of Turkish teaching, which has the potential to branch out as disciplines in the future, have been emphasized. In addition to these conceptualizations, naming foreigners, Turkish for foreigners and Turkish as a foreign language in the literature are also examined with an epistemological approach. As a result of the survey conducted within the scope of the study focusing on the competence and self-efficacy of Turkish instructors as a second/foreign language, some agreements on some specific situations have been identified both in the national and international literature. The most important of these is the types of competence, the knowledge that the field of competence separating the instructor from subject specialist is pedagogy and the recognition that competence areas should be handled together in an integration, not separately. Another finding determined as a result of the research is that although teacher/instructor training is constantly divided into sub-areas such as pre-service, in-service and on-the-job training, lifelong learning should be planned in a holistic structure with a continuous development approach. While a lot has been done for the training of Turkish teachers specializing in mother tongue education, it has been determined that there are serious deficiencies, especially standardization deficiencies, in the education of Turkish instructors as a second/foreign language. When the collected data were analyzed, both the competency and self-efficacy scores of Turkish instructors as a second language and the competency and self-efficacy scores of Turkish instructors as a foreign language were close to each other. However, in both groups, the competency scores were not as high as the perceived self-efficacy, on the contrary, it was seen that there were many competency areas that need to be supported. The data collected showed that in both groups, the competency scores of the teachers were high, especially in cases where field knowledge was used, while significant decreases were observed in the pedagogical competencies. According to the information obtained from the demographic information forms, it can be stated that nearly 50% of the instructors work without pedagogy training and have not participated in a certificate program for teaching Turkish as a foreign language. Although there was no significant difference, the total scores of the participants having pedagogy training were higher in both their competence and self-efficacy. It was determined that although the participants had a perception of self-efficacy close to the full score, when their competencies were considered, the scores were relatively low, and the decreases were observed in items that require intensive pedagogical knowledge more than field knowledge. Within the scope of the study, it was realized that instructor training programs should be developed in a standard and controlled manner getting feedback from field-specific studies on pedagogical competencies and reflecting these outputs to the instructor training processes. It would also be beneficial to support current teachers to improve their technological pedagogical content knowledge and competencies.