The Relationship Between Primary School Teacher Candidates’ Communication Skills and Empathetic Tendency Levels

The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between communication skills and empathetic tendency levels of the primary school teacher cadidates who are receiving education at Pamukkale University. The population of the study is composed by the forth grade students in 2018-2019 academic year of Pamukkale University Education Faculty. In this study, it has been researched whether the candidate teachers' empathetic tendency levels and communication skills differ or not, according to their high school type, gender, parent education status, number of siblings and reasons for choosing the teaching profession. In this study, it has been examined that describing of a substantial situation and accordingly this what extent the variables are related to each other. The research model of the study is a descriptive research in relational survey method of the general survey models. In this study, to measure of the empathy levels of the individuals developed by Spreng et al. (2009) and the Turkish version developed by Totan, Doğan and Sapmaz (2012) is called ‘Toronto Empathy Questionnaire’ and "The Communication Skills Assessment Scale" developed by Korkut (1996) were used as measuring tool. According to the findings of the research, no significant difference was found between the candidate teachers' empathetic tendency levels and communication skills, gender, type of school, number of siblings, mother’s education, father's education status and reasons for choosing the teaching profession. A positive relationship was found between the empathetic tendencies and communication skills total scores of primary school teacher candidates.

Keywords

empathy, empathetic tendency, empathetic skills, communication, communication skill