Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate female pre-service preschool teachers’ attitudes towards sport in relation to the variables of grade level, the state of having done sport in the past, the reason for not doing sport in the past, the state of doing sport regularly, the level of interest in sport and the existence of a family member doing sport. Participants included 383 pre-service preschool teachers attending Ahmet KeleÅŸoÄŸlu Education Faculty of Necmettin Erbakan University in the 2015 to 2016 academic year. In determining participants’ attitudes towards sport, “The Scale of Attitudes towards Sport” was used. In the statistical analysis of the collected data, frequency analysis, Kruskal Wallis H test and Mann Whitney U test in SPSS 22.0 program were used. At the end of the study, it was found that female pre-service preschool teachers’ levels of psychosocial development, physical development and total attitude levels are high yet their mental development attitude level is medium. When the data were evaluated on the basis of the demographic features, it was found that their attitudes towards sport vary significantly depending on the variables of the state of having done sport in the past and the state of doing sport regularly (p<0.05). However, their attitudes towards sport do not vary significantly depending on the variables of grade level, the reason for not having done sport in the past, the level of interest in sport and the existence of a family member doing sport (p>0.05). As a result, it can be argued that having done sport in the past and doing sport regularly at present positively affect the attitudes towards sport.

Key words: Preschool teaching, sport, attitude.