ijcer . net An Analysis of Prospective Teachers ’ Anxiety of not Being Appointed to Teachership

This study aims to investigate faculty of education students’ anxiety of not being appointed to teachership levels. This is a quantitative research designed as survey model. Study group of the study is consisted of 320 students studying at faculty of education from six departments and four grades in 2018-2019 academic year. Quantitative data analysis methods were used. Significant difference was determined as .05.The data were collected through “The Anxiety of Pre-service Teachers’ Not to Be Appointed to Teachership Scale”. The scale has two sub-dimensions which are ‘fear of not being appointed to teachership” and “personal perception”. According to the research results, mean score of anxiety level of participants is 3.55, which is high. Participants’ anxiety level of not being appointed does not significantly differ in terms of gender, grade and belief of being a good teacher variables. Personal perception dimension of the scale significantly differs in terms of the department variable. These results confirm that faculty of education students have high level of not being appointed anxiety and gender, grade, belief of being a good teacher variables do not affect anxiety level but department variable affects students’ anxiety levels of not being appointed to teachership at personal perception dimension.


Introduction
Time is one of the most important issues today. People are all in rush of doing things on time. This situation ruins people's lives such as losing emotional health and starting to live with some illnesses. People need to pay attention to emotional health, and anxiety is one of the factors that affect emotions. Anxiety is the study topic of many different research areas such as health, education, politics and society (Gormsen, Rosenberg, Bach & Jensen, 2010;Hollway, & Jefferson, 1997;Neumann, 2017;Vitasari, Wahab, Othman, Herawan & Sinnadurai, 2010). It is obvious that anxiety is a life challenge of people. Anxiety has been studied and defined in different aspects. Anxiety is a person's feeling of uneasiness and worry in the presence of threatening situation (Işık,1996). Anxiety is a person's feeling of fear and tension under threat (Büyüköztürk, 1997). Anxiety is emotional and observable reactions of a person in sadness, detection and tension situations (Spielberger, 1972). Anxiety is a feeling of excitement with insecurity (Öncül, 2000). According to these definitions, it is obvious that anxiety is an important factor affecting people's life comfort and quality. People who are living without anxiety can make decisions easily, socialize better, work sufficiently, and live in better mood. There are different types of anxiety that affect people life.
Situational anxiety is a temporary anxiety type that mostly occurs by depending on environmental conditions (Öner & Le Compte, 1985;Kuru, 2000). Situational anxiety is a kind of feeling together with fear, stress and tension (Spielberger, 1979). Situational anxiety originated by a person perceives conditions as threatening. Situational anxiety eads touneasiness, fear, stress, tension and insecurity feelings. Situational anxiety is a person's feeling changings depending on permanent situations. Intensity of situational anxiety differentiates time to time.
Permanent anxiety is a personal trait which rises when the stress is perceived as threatening and the intensity of threat increases and becomes permanent (Öner & Le Compte, 1985). The severity and duration of this type of stress change depending on personality. Permanent anxiety level is affected tendency of personality. Permanent anxiety level can be explained as threatening, dangerous, rising situational anxiety level and affecting perceiving, analysing, commenting environment (Bozdam, 2008). Permanent anxiety cannot be observed directly from the behaviours of a person. It can be seen with the rising reactions and intensity of behaviours in duration (Başaran,2008). People in permanent anxiety feel anxiety more often and intense (William, 2002).
Cognitive anxiety is related to cognitive side of the brain and affects the analytic process of the person. It is defined as person's cognitive issues and negative prospects and expected results of these ideas (Morris et al., 1981). Cognitive anxiety occurs when a person cannot expect or combine experiences (Vineyand & Westbrook, 1976). Cognitive anxiety positively affects sharing resources that a person is responsible to complete and negatively effects task-irrelevant cognitive activity if the recourses reduce (Wine, 1980). Difficulty of concentration and making decision, forgetfulness, confusion, memory weakness, extreme imagination, a single idea or be engaged in thought, low productivity, work quality decline, error increase, are cognitive anxiety signs (Bakırcı, 2012).
Somatic anxiety depends on physiological variables which directly affects anxiety level of a person. Symptoms of somatic anxiety are commonly seen as pulsation, blood pressure, muscle strain, and sweating hands (Gümüş, 2002). Somatic anxiety comes through by tension feeling of body. Person who is feeling somatic anxiety demonstrates physical reactions and sometimes observed by people around. Somatic anxiety causes dermatological diseases, hearth diseases, circulatory system diseases, digestive system disease, respiratory disease and reproductive system diseases (Kırel, 1993).
Feeling anxiety is not easy always hidden by a person since reaction can be observed. There are some common signs of feeling anxiety. Person becomes lazy from being overexcitement and hyperactivity. Fear, anger, antipathy, tiredness, muscle pain and mental illnesses are most common symptoms of anxiety (Akandere 1997). Headache, sweating, weight loss, tiredness, dermatological diseases, uneasiness, hopelessness, unhappiness, despair, bad temper and forgetfulness are the symptoms of anxiety (Başoğlu, 2007). Shortness of breath, stomach ache, sweating, tension, tiredness, bad temper, headache, muscle pain are common anxiety symptoms (Cüceloğlu, 1996).
People with stress and feeling anxiety have to cope with this condition. There are some strategies and methods to cope with anxiety to control the symptoms of anxiety. A person coping with anxiety should change unreal and negative thoughts. According to cognitive-emotional approach, the aim is to change negative ideas to positive, realistic, flexible, reasonable, consistent thoughts which support person's psychological health and reaching meaningful goals (Aydın & İmamoğlu, 2001). Cognitive approach focuses on cognitive reactions and thoughts and aims to change cognitive reactions to positive thoughts (Atkinson et. all. 1999).
Young people mostly wish to study at university in Turkey. Studying at university has a process. Before and during studying at university, students face some issues such as preparation to university exam, finding accommodation, academic success, assignments, project works, internship and final thesis. Teacher education is a process covering selecting candidate teachers, pre-service education, internship, following and evaluation of internship process and in-service training (Kavcar, 2002). Students studying at faculty of education have one more issue which is the difficulty of being appointed to state schools as a teacher. This process creates anxiety in a while.
Faculty of education in Turkey has four year-eight term education process and each year students have cultural, content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge courses related to their departments. After four years of education, students successfully complete bachelor's degree and become prospective teachers. Becoming a prospective teacher means having enough qualifications to be a teacher. Prospective teachers can work at private schools, education centres and state schools as teachers.
In Turkey, to appoint as a state teacher, faculty of education students need to complete some stages. At first stage, students need to graduate from an undergraduate department of faculty of education successfully. Candidates with bachelor's degree enter a national exam which is called Public Personnel Selection Examination (KPSS) to be appointed as a teacher to state schools. This examination consists of two parts which are general knowledge -general-ability and specialised knowledge. At second stage, candidates having enough exam score are called to interview and appointed to state schools as teachers according to exam scores depending on quota (Ministry of National education, 2019).
According to MoNE (2019), candidates at first appointment should have special qualifications in addition to the general necessity of qualifications in accordance with law 657 article 48. Bachelor's degree of the candidate should be appropriate to Turkish Education Board appointment regulation. Health conditions of the candidates should be suitable to work in any part of the country. Candidates' ages shouldn't be over forty. Candidates should have certified or at least 3 credits computer education course. Candidates should have a minimum or over exam score determined by ministry of education. Candidates should have suitable judicial record. This complicated process and the low number of appointed teachers compared to graduated prospective teachers lead the prospective teachers feel anxiety.
The aim of this study is to investigate prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership levels and the factors affecting students' anxiety. In this context, the research questions are as follows. 1. What is prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership level? 2. Do prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership levels differ in terms of gender? 3. Do prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership levels differ in terms of grade? 4. Do prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership levels differ in terms of department? 5. Do prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership levels differ in terms of belief of being a good teacher? 6. How could prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership levels be reduced?

Methodology
At this part of the study, research model, study group, data collection tool and data analyse process are explained.

Research Model
This study is a quantitative research designed as survey model to investigate prospective teachers' anxiety factors of being not appointed. A survey model is an approach aiming to investigate a situation in the past or available in present (Karasar, 2005).

Study Group
The study group consists of 320 randomly selected students studying at a faculty of education four grades and six departments in 2018-2019 academic year at a state university in Turkey. Departments of the participants are Science education, English language education, Physical education, Social sciences education, Primary teacher education and Turkish language education. At Table 1, Statistical information of participants' gender, grade, department and belief of being good teacher variables were presented.

Data Collection Tool
Data of the research were collected through a scale form. 320 forms were evaluated for this research. Data collection tool consists of two parts. The first part of the data collection tool contains gender, grade, department and belief of being good teacher information of the participants. The second part of the data collection tool contains "The Anxiety of Pre-service Teachers' Not to Be Appointed to Teachership Scale" (Eskici, 2016

Data Analysis
SPSS 18 statistical program was used to analyse the research data. For distribution analysis, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and for homogeneity of variances Levene statistics was used. 'The anxiety of pre-service teachers' not to be appointed to teachership scale' has two sub-dimensions. First sub-dimension is 'fear not to be appointed to teachership" and consisted of 10 items and second sub-dimension is "personal perception" and covers 3 items. Analysis results reveal that both scale and two sub-dimensions do not show normal distribution Within this context, from nonparametric tests; Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis H test were used for data analysis. Descriptive statistics were used and .05 was determined as significant difference.

Findings
The study investigated prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership in terms of gender, grade, department and belief of being a good teacher variables. At this part of the research finding results are provided were submitted below. At Table 2, first research question' analysis results are provided submitted. Prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership level mean score is 3.55. This means that faculty of education students have high level of not being appointed anxiety level. Kolmogorov-Smirnov score of the students is .000. Since these results are not enough to decide analysis type, each independent variable was tested with dependent variable and following tests were performed. At Table 3, prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership levels were examined in terms of gender variable.  Table 3, prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership level does not significantly differ (p>.05) in terms of gender variable. Female students' not being appointed anxiety mean score is 3.61 and male students' not being appointed anxiety mean score is 3.40. In other words, female students' fear of not being appointed score is higher than male students. This difference could be that female students are more motivated to be appointed and this motivation could create anxiety. While fear of not being appointed to teachership sub-dimension and personal perception sub-dimension were examined, female participants' fear of not being appointed to teachership sub-dimension mean score is 3.80 and male participants' personal perception sub-dimension mean score is 3.53. According to analysis results, fear of not being appointed to teachership and personal perception sub-dimensions do not significantly differ (p>.05) in terms of gender variable. Prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership level was given below at Table 4 according to grade differences. According to Table 4, prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership level does not significantly differ (p>.05) in terms of grade variable. In other words, grade difference does not affect faculty of education students' not being appointed anxiety level. Students from all grades have anxiety of not being appointed. This could affect students' education process in a negative way. Students studying at any grade have high level of not being appointed anxiety level. According to analysis results, fear of not being appointed to teachership and personal perception sub-dimensions do not significantly differ (p>.05) in terms of grade variable. At Table 5 below, prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership level is given according to department differences. According to Table 5, prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership level does not differ in terms of department variable. In other words, Students in all departments have not being appointed anxiety. Although quota of appointment and KPSS appointment scores differ depending on department difference Turkey, students have anxiety of not being appointed. According to mean rank scores examined (X ̅ rank), department of social education students' have the highest anxiety level of not being appointed. The reason of this could be that the quota of appointment is low and minimum passing exam score is high. Primary teacher education students have the lowest level of not being appointed mean rank scores (X ̅ rank). The reason of this result could be that the primary school education department has the highest quota of appointment and minimum passing exam score is not as high as most of the other departments. According to analysis results, prospective teachers' fear of not being appointed to teachership sub-dimension does not significantly differ (p>.05) in terms of department variable. According to analysis results, faculty of education students' personal perception subdimension significantly differ (p>.05) in terms of department variable. To determine of which pairwise departments this significant difference stem from, Mann-Whitney U test was used, given at Table 6. At Table 6. four pairwise departments are given. Significant difference of pairwise departments is in favour of having higher mean score. At Table 7 below, prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership levels are given in terms of belief of being a good teacher variable. According to Table 7, prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership level does not differ in terms of belief of being a good teacher variable. In other words, students' not being appointed anxiety level is not affected by belief of being a good teacher variable. When Table 7 is examined, 301 of the students have belief of being a good teacher. This result explains that students studying at faculty of education are well motivated, having self-confidence. According to analysis results, fear of not being appointed to teachership subdimension and personal perception sub-dimension do not significantly differ (p>.05) in terms of belief of being a good teacher variable.

Discussion and Conclusion
Starting a career is one of the most important issues of young people and they study or train to start a career point according to their talents and abilities. This issue brings some problems together. Anxiety can be a common emotion illness of the population these days. Career starting brings anxiety as well. Especially young people spend time and money for their education and training to start a better career and live in a comfortable life. Young people especially see this situation as a competition of life. For university students studying at faculty of education, teaching career starts with appointment to a state school as a teacher. The process of appointment starts with taking KPSS, having score in quota and entering interview. Applicants having enough score, which is between quota scores, are appointed as a teacher. For the applicants who couldn't be appointed, the process starts from the beginning. This process takes months and emotions of the applicants suffer. At this process, anxiety comes to existence. Applicants start to feel anxiety feelings depending on their characteristics. This study aims to investigate the factors affecting prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership levels in terms of gender, grade, department and belief of being good teacher variables.
The first finding of the research explains that prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership mean score is 3.55. According to Likert 5 type of scale, 3.40-4.20 ranks means 'I agree'. In other words, the participants highly feel anxiety of not being appointed. Besides, KPSS negatively affects teacher candidates' social relations, cultural, artistic and sportive activities (Sezgin & Duran, 2011). As the negative opinions, social pressure and future anxiety increase, the negative effect on life quality increases. Family support reduces the perceived social pressure of KPSS on teacher candidates. KPSS is one of the most important exam of teacher candidates' life and the exam and exam preparation process is mentally, economically and socially wearing, KPSS is not a qualified exam to choose teachers, university courses should be related to KPSS exam and generally KPSS exam increases the anxiety level of teacher candidates (Gündoğdu, Çimen & Turan, 2008). Teacher candidates have negative attitude towards teacher selection exam, and they feel anxiety and inability (Uyulgan & Akkuzu, 2015). Intolerance towards hopelessness and uncertainty significantly predict teacher candidates' life satisfaction (Şar, Işıklar & Aydoğan, 2012). Teacher candidates feel KPSS test anxiety which is effective on achievement. Teacher candidates claim that KPSS is not a qualified exam to choose teachers. Teacher candidates stated that for KPSS exam they need preparation institution, it affects themselves, social life and bachelor education negatively and KPSS is not an exam choosing qualified teachers. In addition to exam, there should be interview, applied phases and this exam repeated in service process (Atav & Sönmez, 2013). Social science students claimed that KPSS preparation time is an important factor of having anxiety (Harun & Kaya, 2014). Besides, KPSS is not a contemporary exam, harming mental health of people, and force teacher to memorising (Taşan & Bektaş, 2016).
The second finding of the research explains that prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership level does not significantly differ according to gender. In other words, both male and female students have not being appointed anxiety and this anxiety was not affected by gender difference. Female students' not being appointed mean score is 3.61 and male students' not being appointed mean score is 3.40. Both female and male students have high level of not being appointed anxiety level. In other studies, it is highlighted that teacher candidates' hopeless level does not significantly differ according to gender but differs according to age and economic level (Arı & Yılmaz, 2015). Females have more positive attitudes towards teaching profession (Doğan & Çoban, 2009).
The third finding of the research explains that prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership level does not significantly differ according to grade difference. This means that grade difference is not a factor of affecting faculty of education students' not being appointed anxiety. The fourth finding of the research explains that faculty of education students' not being appointed anxiety does not significantly differ according to department differences. This result means that department difference is not a factor of affecting prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership levels. The fifth finding of the research explains that prospective teachers' anxiety of not being appointed to teachership level does not significantly differ according their belief of being a good teacher. In other words, faculty of education students who believe to be a good teacher or not, have not being appointed anxiety. Students who believe to be a good teacher have a mean score of 3.55 and the mean score of the students' who don't believe to be a good teacher is 3.86.
Students', who are pessimistic to find a job, have anxiety (Doğan & Çoban, 2009). Teacher candidates criticize objectivity of KPSS test (Karataş & Güleş, 2013). Teacher candidates stated that teacher selection oral exam is mostly out of field, exam commissions are mostly subjective, exam duration is insufficient for evaluation, oral exam appointment regulation is not objectively prepared. Additionally, participants stated that oral exam trivialised teacher candidates, didn't make a contribution to qualifications of teachers, and feel anxiety regarding to the future of teaching profession (Koşar, Er, Koşar, & Kılınç, 2018).