SINIF ÖĞRETMENİ ADAYLARININ ARASINAV VE DÖNEM SONU SINAVLARI HAKKINDAKİ GÖRÜŞLERİ

Education is seen as the basic cause of problems in all areas of society in the world of 21st century. As a matter of fact, education in this sense means the instruction given to a child by his/her parents, which continues with elementary education at formal education institutions thereafter. The most critical level of this process is elementary education. When the practices in Turkey as regards elementary level are considered, first stage of elementary education which covers 1st to 5th grades come to the forefront. Primary school teachers deliver every course other than branch courses at the first stage of elementary schools, so much so that a primary school teacher can spend more time with a pupil than they spend with their parents on a weekday. Thus, problems which are claimed to be caused by education are in a sense problems related to primary school teachers. In Turkey primary school teachers receive 4 years of undergraduate study at faculties of education. There are many studies in Turkey which are conducted on this undergraduate study period, and quite a number of studies are still underway. However, it is highly remarkable that there are not so many studies on the measurement and assessment of contributions of undergraduate courses to primary school teachers. Nevertheless, it is an unfortunate reality that students who become eligible to enrolling at universities after elementary and secondary education levels have much more exam experience than their contemporaries in other countries. From this point forth, effort has been paid to examine the views of primary school teaching students on midterm and final examinations. Thus, an attempt has been made to display the view of primary school teaching students on the efforts for measuring and assessing student attainments. Measurement and assessment have an important role in education. The properties which are vitally important according to any curriculum, such as functioning of the programme, the applicability of the methods, the determination of the learning weaknesses, the success levels of the learners, can be expressed by the processing of measurement and assessment phases functionally. The components of measurement and assessment in educational curriculums are used in different phases of the educational process. Measurement is in general the procedure of observing quality and expressing the observed results with numerical signs or symbols. Any measurement data gain meaning with assessment and a reliable assessment depends upon the measurement data. Assessment is the process of judgement whish is provided by comparing the measurement results with a criterion or assessment is the systematic collection, review, and use of information about educational programs undertaken for the purpose of improving student learning and development. Assessment is a formative process that focuses on student learning. Assessment involves “setting explicit student learning goals or outcomes for an academic program”, “evaluating the extent to which students are reaching those goals” and “using the information for program development and improvement”. The purpose of assessment is to understand how educational programs are working and to determine whether they are contributing to student growth and development. The quality of the assessment depends on the reliability and validity of the measurement results. An educator who develops a measurement instrument should know that it measures the intended property without any error and it can realize the intended measurement. For this reason, the educator should examine the quality of the instrument, and determine its validity and reliability. Validity and reliability of the measurement instrument should be confirmed before any application in the process. the valid and reliable measuring instruments used in the Faculty of Education lessons’ curriculums have great importance in the educational process because they are conducive to the measurement and assessment, and the control of the educational process. In this study views of primary school teacher candidates on midterm and final examinations have been investigated. The research was conducted on senior students studying in Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University Faculty of Education Primary School Teaching Programme. Out of a population of 244 students 179 were selected to constitute the sample. In the study a scale developed by the researcher has been used. Results of the study indicated that the primary school teacher candidates were administered mostly written exams, that they preferred to take multiple choice exams, that they deemed an exam period of 45-60 minutes appropriate, that the exams were directed to measure the memorization ability, that they had begun to prepare for the exams a few days prior to the exam dates, that they considered the questions to have been mostly comprehensible, that they thought that the exam instructions had been usually adequate.