Acta Didactica Napocensia, vol.8, no.3, pp.47-54, 2015 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
The current paper primarily aims to investigate pre-service science and mathematics
teachers’ personal growth initiative levels. The second aim of the study is to examine whether
participants’ initiative levels differ in relation to their gender, grade, department, perceived
academic achievement, and willingness to attend graduate education after graduation. The study
group consists of 212 pre-service teachers (156 female, 56 male). 80 of them attend science
education program, whereas 79 of them attend primary mathematics education and 53 of them
attend secondary mathematics education program in two different state universities located in
Aksaray and Ankara, Turkey. The participants were surveyed by “The Personal Growth Initiative
Scale-PGIS” developed by Robitschek (1998) and adapted into Turkish by Akın and Anlı (2011).
The data collected during the spring term of 2014/15 academic year. The construct validity of the
scale was verified by confirmatory factor analysis, and the reliability was examined by calculating
the Cronbach alpha value of the PGIS. The results showed that (1) pre-service teachers have
moderate levels of personal growth initiative, (2) their PGI levels statistically differ in relation to
their willingness to attend graduate education, and (3) juniors have higher levels of personal
growth initiative than freshman and sophomores.