Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Journal of theory and practice in education, cilt.15, sa.1, ss.11-23, 2019 (Hakemli Dergi)
Community service applications is a course provided by faculties of education in order to
give the prospective teachers the chance to identify social problems related their field,
develop project focused on social problems, analyze general needs of the society, become
acquainted with public institutions, debate social problems, and develop positive attitude
towards participating to community service practices. The aim of this study is to find out
prospective language teachers’ teaching experiences and opinions about their community
service applications. 20 prospective teachers from an English language teaching
department of a state university participated in this qualitative study. The participants
were given a semi-structured questionnaire with questions related to their teaching
experience at a kindergarten. After 10 weeks and 10 hours of teaching experience the
participants’ reports were analyzed according to content analysis approach. The results
indicated that most of the participants developed positive attitudes towards teaching in
such a public service and reported this activity as inspiring for their future teaching. The
study concluded that more importance should be given to community service appliances
since it is much helpful for prospective teachers’ teaching experiences and at the same
time it provides opportunity for students to identify social related issues and hence
develop a bridge between the university and the society.