Pedagogical development level of pre-service primary school teachers for science teaching

In this study, the pedagogical development level of pre-service primary school teachers for science teaching was examined. The participants of the study consist of 135 pre-service teachers from Primary School Teaching Department in Faculty of Education at Pamukkale University. After removing the invalid forms, a total of 128 pre-service teachers participated in the study. Data were collected with “Pre-service Teachers’ Pedagogical Development Scale” developed by Hudson and Ginns and adapted by Haciomeroglu and Şahin-Taskin. For data analysis, standard deviation, mean, t-test, one way ANOVA were used. Results showed that the pre-service teachers "totally agreed" they have science teaching skills in general. They "totally agreed" also with the dimensions (theory, development of children, planning, and practice) of the scale. There was no statistical difference between the pedagogical development levels of the pre-service teachers according to their gender. However, they differ according to the type of high school that they graduated from; other types of high schools (Anatolian Teacher Training High School and Science High School) perceived themselves more efficient than students from Anatolian High Schools in terms of theory and planning dimensions.   Key words: Pedagogical development, science teaching, pre-service primary school teacher.