AN ASSESSMENT OF PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS' PRESENTATION SKILLS

Abstract

The present study aims to identify the strengths and weaknesses of prospective primary teachers with regard to their presentation skills. To this end, the study was conducted in Celal Bayar University during the academic year 2007-2008. It was carried out in the science teaching course and involves 203 prospective teachers. The applications lasted for four hours a week for a total of 10 weeks. Instructor, peer and self assessment were used as the data collection instruments in the study. The obtained data were analyzed using the SPSS software and item means were calculated for each item. These results indicate a highly strong relationship between the instructor's perceptions and the prospective teachers' self-perceptions about their strengths and weaknesses with regard to presentation skills in science teaching. Thus, there is a striking parallelism between the prospective teachers' strongest and weakest skills according to the instructor's assessment and self-peer assessment scores. On the basis of these results, some suggestions are made about the prospective teachers' presentation skills and their contribution to their professional teaching life.