OPINIONS OF GRADUATES OF SOCIAL SCIENCES TEACHING ON THE PUBLIC SERVANT ELECTION EXAM
In achieving educational goals of a society, the priority is on individuals’ education. In an educational system, one of the constituents that have the most important roles is the “teachers”. The more competent the teachers are, the more competent the society is. Currently, there is a growing number of teacher candidates in Turkey as the universities produce more graduates than those primary and secondary education need. Therefore, there is a limited number of teacher candidates appointed each year. Such limits create a need for an election test. By such a test, the most successful ones among the candidates whose skills and knowledge are evaluated, are elected. This test was called “the Election Exam for Appointment to Public Service”, (the EEAPS), and later “the Centralised Election Exam for State Organisations”, (the CEESO), until 2002. As of 2002, following a new regulation, this test has been called “Public Servant Election Exam”, and all qualifying teacher candidates, who want to be involved in civil service in state schools, have been obliged to take this test since then. From that year on, the PSEE has been held to elect the teacher candidates to be appointed, as well as other public servants. Recently, there is a growing number of candidates among the graduates of social sciences teaching, who are trained to teach such courses as Social Sciences and Ataturk’s Principals and History of Turkish Revolution in 5th,6th,7th and 8th grades of secondary education, and who are expecting an appointment. Therefore, there is a congregating number of teachers who have not been appointed yet. The objective of this research is to present the opinions of teacher candidates among the graduates of social sciences teaching on the PSEE system by analysing their concerns on and expectations from the PSEE. The population of the research comprises those teacher candidates who have graduated from social sciences teaching, and have not been appointed yet. The research sample comprises teacher candidates within the research population, who have graduated from the Faculty of Education of Amasya University and Samsun Ondokuz Mayıs University in 2017 and in previous years, taken the PSEE, and not been appointed yet. In this research, a semi-structured interview is administered. The interviewees are determined on a voluntary basis, using homogeneous purposive sampling method. Data to be collected from the interviews are analysed using NVivo qualitative data analysis software. The opinions of the teacher candidates are analysed according to such variables as their gender, income, place of residence, and graduation. The purpose is to create and awareness regarding the teacher candidates’ concerns on and expectations from the PSEE, and to contribute to further improvements to the PSEE.

Keywords
Graduated teacher candidates, PSEE, apprehension, expectation