A Study of the Relationship between the Prospective Teachers' Attitudes toward the Teaching Profession and Their Preferred Coping Strategies with Stress

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between prospective teachers' attitudes towards the teaching profession and their preferred coping strategies with stress. A relational model was used to determine the relations between these concepts. The study group consisted of 262 prospective teachers in a college of education in Turkey. Two scales were used to collect the data. The Scale of Attitude toward the Teaching Profession (SATTP) was developed by Ustuner (2006) and consists of 34 items and the Scale of Coping with Stress (SCS) was developed by Lazaruz & Folkman (1984) and adapted into Turkish by Sahin & Durak (1995). T-test, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient and MANOVA techniques were used to analyze the data. The findings showed that there was a noticeable statistical meaningful relationship between student teachers' attitudes toward the teaching profession and some of their preferred coping strategies with stress. The findings were discussed based on the literature.