Abstract:

Discrimination means as ‘any distinction, exclusion or preference made on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, political opinion, national extraction or social origin, which has the effect of nullifying or impairing equality of opportunity and treatment in employment or occupation’ by the Discrimination Convention in 1958 (International Labour Organization, 2003).

As a profession, teaching requires having ability to deal with differences. Teachers work at multicultural environments at schools. Because they have to teach different people, they face widely different ethical cases due to the differentiation at schools. Teachers are supposed to teach being fair, just, and patient to differences. Therefore, they need to be fair, just, and patient to differences at first. Because, they are supposed to be just and fair to the students at schools. Even they are modeled by their stu¬dents. The students learn values such as being just, fair, democratic, or being not discrimi¬nating each other as well as academic skills observing their teachers at schools. Even teachers are supposed to serve as model in society in Turkey (Toker Gokce, 2013, 2013b).

This study explores prospective teachers’ perceptions of discrimination in social life. Therefore, the prospective teachers’ reactions related to the differences of people in their environment were examined at first. Secondly kinds of discrimination prospective teachers were exposed, and their responses to these situations were explored in the study. The data was gathered through a questionnaire developed by the author after reviewing the literature. The questionnaire consists of fixed-response, Likert-style and open-ended questions. Personal information (gender, age and departments) was asked at the beginning of the questionnaire. The questionnaire includes three parts: the first one involved open ended questions asking kinds of groups that are perceived powerful or effective by the prospective teachers. The second part includes fixed-response (yes / no questions, and the checklist of each type of discrimination item) questions. This part asked the types of discrimination that the participants have ever showed to other people. The last part asked the types of discrimination perceived by the participants and their responses to discrimination perceived (included in the Likert-style and checklist of each item). Research group involved 250 ‘Teaching Formation Program’ students enrolled in the Faculty of Education of Kocaeli University during the 2014–2015 academic year. The data were analyzed through descriptive statistics. Since the study has been continued the results has not been written here.
This study is supposed to contribute to the literature demonstrating types of discrimination in education context in Turkey.

Keywords:

Education, discrimination, prospective teachers, Turkey.