Suggestions to Identify and Develop Pre-Service Teachers’ Classroom Management Competencies

The purpose of this article is to identify pre-service teachers’ classroom management competencies and to reveal the perceptions of these teachers and the faculty members to develop the teachers’ competencies in classroom management courses. in this regard, it aims to develop these teachers’ classroom management competencies by making classroom management courses more functional. a mixed methods research was used to conduct this study. explanatory sequential design, which is one of the research mixed methods, was employed. the research was conducted in two phases. in the first phase, the “classroom management competency” scale was applied to the pre-service teachers to identify to what extent they see themselves as competent in classroom management through the quantitative method. in the second phase, the interviews were conducted with them to thoroughly understand in which aspects of the classroom management they are competent in the qualitative research. in addition, the interviews were conducted with the faculty members, who are expert on classroom management issue, to identify what could be done in classroom management courses to increase pre-service teachers’ classroom management competencies in the qualitative research. the study group of the research consisted of the pre-service teachers who study at the faculty of education of kilis 7 aralık university. demographic information form, classroom management competency scale and a semi-structured interview form for the pre-service teachers, and the other semi-structured interview form for the faculty members, were used to collect the data. the research data were collected in the fall and spring semesters of 2018-2019 academic year. the quantitative data were analysed through the spss 21.0 software program. arithmetic mean was calculated to determine the pre-service teachers’ classroom management with regards to the general competency and sub-dimension competency levels. content analyses were used in the analysis of the qualitative data. as a result of the analysis of the research, it was found that the teachers’ classroom management competency is at a moderate level. it was revealed that the highest means for classroom management competency are relationship management, physical layout management and time management, respectively and the lowest means are behavior management and instruction management. as a result of the research analysis, it was found that the teachers’ classroom management competency was at a moderate level. it was revealed that the highest means for classroom management competency were relationship management, physical layout management and time management, respectively, and the lowest means were behaviour management and instruction management. it was identified that the pre-service teachers experience some difficulties stemming from themselves and their students in the school experience course. besides, the pre-service teachers realized that their students get bored during their instruction and that they are not competent in the intervention methods. as a result of the study, it was suggested that more practice should be conducted in classroom management courses and instructions should be implemented with role playing, case studies and micro instruction methods in these courses, and that the class hours of these courses should be increased to ensure they are more useful for pre-service teachers.