Human values as a predictor of moral maturity of teacher candidates

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the human values as a predictor of moral maturity of teacher candidates. The research group consists of 139 teacher candidates. "The Human Values Scale" and "The Moral Maturity Scale" are used as the data collection tool in the study. In the data analysis, "mean, standard deviation, Product-Moment Correlation coefficients and multiple regression" were used. As a result of the study, it has been observed that participant students' human values are above the average. Sub-dimensions of human values have been analyzed, freedom is considered as the most important value whereas materialistic values are considered as the least important. In the scope of this research, it has been analyzed that whether there is a relationship between human values and moral maturity level and it has been found that there is a significant positive relation between human values and moral maturity level. A multiple regression analysis was conducted to evaluate how well all-subscales of human values scores predicted moral maturity. The multiple correlation coefficient was .28, indicating that approximately 23% of the variance of the moral maturity can be accounted for by the linear combination of human values’ subscales scores. It was seen that, "social values", one of the sub-dimensions of human values were reasonable predictors of moral maturity