A QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ON DETERMINING FUTURE CONCERNS OF STUDENTS IN DEPARTMENT OF HANDICRAFTS EDUCATION ABOUT THEIR PROFESSIONS

The fact that technology has been rapidly advancing and industrialization has been more and more increasing in our today’s world has caused many products bearing cultural features of societies to be forgotten or to be less valuable for people. Handicrafts are one of the cultural elements getting its own share of this situation. Handicrafts on which every society has reflected their own ways of life, their bad and happy times are now almost sunk into oblivion. It will be partially possible to bring this history back to life and to conserve this culture with the efforts of students having education in handicrafts department both during their education and after their graduation. However, students are having trouble to find a job after their graduation. Consequently, this leads students to have concerns about their professions even when they are still studying. This future concerns about their professions both causes their academic success to decrease and affects their state of minds in a negative way.

In our research, it is aimed to determine future vocational concerns of final grade students of the Department of Art Flower – Making and Weaving, Department of Handicrafts Education of Vocational Education Faculty in Selçuk University. 36 final grade students studying in the Department of Art Flower – Making and Weaving Education were interviewed within the context of this research. Situation analysis method was applied in our study among qualitative research techniques. Questions prepared for semi-constructed interview form were developed by researchers. Each interview was recorded with the permission of interviewer. The data recorded was evaluated by researchers. At the end of the research it was found that most of the final grade students had future concerns about their professions. Students believe that the reason of those future concerns is related to the difficulty of being a teacher after taking the Public Personnel Selection Examination which is applied for all bachelors in Turkey.