Pre-service secondary science and mathematics teachers’ classroom management styles in Turkey

This research was conducted using a survey model. A common goal of survey research is to collect data representative of a population. Survey research is a non-experimental, descriptive research method. Surveys can be useful when a researcher wants to collect data on phenomena that cannot be directly observed. Surveys are used extensively to assess attitudes and characteristics of a wide range of subjects. This research aimed at describing the pre-service secondary science and mathematics teachers’ classroom management styles.

Participants
The research group consisted of 204 pre-service secondary science and mathematics teachers studying in the department of science and mathematics teaching, in the Dumlupınar University Faculty of Education and Pamukkale University Faculty of Education. Their age ranges from 20 to 30. 60.8% were female, and 39.2 % were male. 17.2% were biology teachers, 19.1% were chemistry teachers, 30.4% were physics teachers and 33.3% were mathematics teachers.

Instrument
The Attitudes and Beliefs on Classroom Control (ABCC) Inventory were used as the data collecting instrument in the study. The ABCC Inventory was developed by Martin et al. (1998) with the purpose of measuring teachers’ perceptions of their classroom management beliefs and practices. In the scale there are 26 Likert-type items. Within this inventory, classroom management was defined as a multi-faceted construct that included three broad dimensions: instructional management (14 items), people management (8 items), and behavior management (4 items). Each scale was derived to assess a continuum of control ranging over three approaches to classroom interaction: non-interventionist, interventionist and interactionalist. A four-point Likert scale was used. After reverse scoring of some items, high subscale scores indicate a more controlling, interventionist approach, while lower scores are indicative of a less controlling belief in that dimension of classroom management style (Savran and Çakıroğlu, 2004).

The ABCC Inventory was adapted into Turkish by Savran (2002) and includes a two-factor structure. In two-factor structure, three items (items 6, 7, and 24) were omitted using a factor load of .30 as the cut-off point and one item (item 17) on the wrong factor. After deleting the four items, subsequent factor analysis for the refinement of the two-factor structure retained items weighted highly on their own scale. Three remaining items (items 23, 25, and 26) in the behavioral management scale were retained on the people management scale with high factor load. These two factors corresponded to the instructional and people management scales of the ABCC Inventory. The instructional management scale includes 12-items factor loads ranging from .33 to .64 and the people management scale includes 10-items factor loads ranging from .46 to .58. Reliability analysis of the instructional management scale produced an alpha of .71. Corrected item-total correlation of all items was .23 and above. The people management scale produced an alpha of .73. All items had corrected item-total correlations of .31 and above (Savran, 2002; Savran and Çakıroğlu, 2004). Inventory is answered as 1-Strongly disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Agree and 4-Strongly agree.

Data Analysis
In the analysis of the first questions of the study, descriptive statistics were used to determine the pre-service secondary science and mathematics teachers’ classroom management styles. Increasing the scores indicate a more controlling, interventionist approach while decreasing the scores are indicative of a less controlling belief in that dimension of classroom management style (Savran and Çakıroğlu, 2004). T-tests were used to determine whether the pre-service secondary science and mathematics teachers’ classroom management styles differed according to gender. ANOVA was used to determine whether they differed according to field of study.