The Correlates of Turkish Preschool Preservice Teachers’ Social Competence, Empathy and Communication Skills

The purpose of the current study was to examine the associations between Turkish preschool pre-service teacher's personal and educational characteristics, and their social competence, empathy, and communication skills.A total of 385 state university Turkish pre-service teachers (age range 18 to 32 years) from the early childhood education field completed a Demographic Information Form on personal and educational characteristics, the Social Skills Inventory (SSI) Scale measuring their social competence, The Scales of Empathic Tendency for measuring empathy skills, and a Communication Skills Evaluation Scale measuring communication skills.Bivariate Pearson-correlations, independent t tests, and one-way ANOVAs were used to test study hypotheses.Results indicated that women scored higher on empathy and communication skills, and having more friends was related to higher social competence and empathy.Pre-service teachers who were members of a social club scored higher on communication skills than their peers.Additional associations among variables, limitations, and future directions are discussed.