Evaluating the Attitudes of Prospective Elementary School Mathematics Teachers Towards Postgraduate Education in Turkey and Other Components with Fuzzy Logic

• Main Author: Elif BAHADIR
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bülent Ecevit University 2017-04-01
• Series: Yükseköğretim ve Bilim Dergisi
• Subjects: Fuzzy logic; Postgraduate education; Attitude
• Online Access: http://higheredu-sci.beun.edu.tr/pdf.php3?id=1742

Postgraduate education, which is regarded as necessary in the field of education in order to improve the qualifications of teachers seen as culture workers, has become more important than it used to be. In this context, the attitudes of prospective teachers toward pursuing a postgraduate education are crucial. In this study, all of the components, including grades, scores and the attitudes of prospective teachers were interpreted by a fuzzy logic-based evaluation for admission to postgraduate education. The attitudes of the underpostgraduate students towards postgraduate education were determined according to ‘the Postgraduate Attitude Scale’. The students’ four year college grade point averages and ‘academic personnel and postgraduate education entrance exam’ scores were also taken into account, and their eligibility for postgraduate education was assessed by using fuzzy logic rules. The study was conducted with 155 prospective teachers who were underpostgraduate students in the program of mathematics teaching for elementary school. During the study, after the test operation was done with one-third of the data, an 80.77% result of the general prediction rate was obtained. These results were further analyzed in detail, and 76 out of 96 students who were eligible for postgraduate education and 48 out of the 59 remaining students were predicted correctly. The data obtained from the study was assessed using fuzzy logic methods, and this approach has proven to reach more effective and accurate results.