Abstract

Despite being an important dimension of teachers’ professional development, researcherly disposition is not sufficiently emphasized in initial teacher education. Researcherly disposition can be explained as intentional affective, cognitive and operational tendency to follow existing research in specific contexts, engaging in research production and sharing research, in order to strengthen the link between learning, research and teaching and to direct instruction. This research aims to develop an instrument for identifying researcherly disposition in teacher education context. For the construct validity, exploratory factor analysis was conducted with data collected from 350 pre-service teachers and confirmatory factor analysis with another study group of 325 pre_x0002_service teachers. Then, final scale was used with 338 participants. After the model was verified, the Researcherly Disposition Scale was developed as 18-item four-factor scale. Cronbach Alpha coefficient correlation of scale was found out to be (α)=.88 and the total explained variance appeared to be %55.60. Thess four-factor structure indicated that the Researcherly Disposition Scale was valid and reliable for future studies. Additionally, female pre-service teachers in Turkey have higher researcherly disposition. Those who participated two or more congress have higher researcherly dispositions compared to those who participated to one or none. Also, those who follow one or more journals have higher researcherly dispositions compared to those who do not follow any journal. Researcherly disposition differs by departments of pre-service teachers. For recommendation, pre-service teachers should meet up with research-oriented professionals who elaborate on teaching and they should be encouraged to follow educational research journals and academic congresses in initial teacher education.