The Psychological Needs of Prospective Classroom Teachers

Abstract

The aim of the study is to investigate the psychological needs of prospective classroom
teachers and determine the comparative correlations between these needs and gender, parental attitude,
academic achievement and grade variables. The model of the study is correlation type relational mining
model. The participants of study were 229 teacher candidates who attended classroom teacher program at
Ahi Evran University in 2012. According to findings there were significant differences between
psychological needs for achievement, dominance, autonomy and communication of teacher candidates. In
addition, the need for achievement is more common for teacher candidates than the other needs. On the
other hand, the least common need of the teacher candidates is communication. Additionally, as a result of
multivariate analysis of variance, the psychological needs of teacher candidates (achievement, affiliation,
autonomy and dominance) indicated no significant differences in terms of variables such as; gender and
grade, gender and academic achievement, gender and perceived mother attitude, gender and perceived
father attitude.