Abstract

Many factors interact with each other in learning and internalizing a subject along with performing a new task. Attitudes and stress are the two of these factors. The aim of this study was to examine attitudes to learning and educational stress in third and fourth year students as prospective primary school teachers. The relational model was used and data were collected with Educational Stress Scale for Adolescents and Scale for Attitudes to Learning. The population of the study includes the students in the Education Faculty of a university where the researcher worked and a total of 189 third-year and fourth-year students formed the study sample. While the students’ attitudes to learning differed in terms of subscales of educational stress, they either mostly agreed or were indecisive about their attitudes and stress. They also got low scores for educational stress; and a significant difference in attitudes to learning and expectations from learning in favor of the female students was observed. Similarly, the female students got higher scores for pressure from study, self-expectation and educational stress in general. No significant difference was found between the third-year and the fourth-year students in terms of their attitudes to learning, but the fourth-year students had a higher self-expectation. The sections of the students did not create a difference. There were relations between subscales of the scales. In view of these results, it can be suggested that educational stress can be reduced by using appropriate interventions designed to decrease worries about grades and workload and to support expectations of students.

Key words: Prospective primary school teacher, attitudes to learning and educational stress.