Bu araştırmanın temel amacı, öğretmen adaylarının öğretmenlik mesleği etik dışı davranışlara ilişkin görüşlerini saptamaktır. Araştırmaya özel bir üniversitenin farklı bölümlerinde öğrenim gören 572 öğretmen adayı gönüllü olarak katılmıştır. Yapılan analizler sonucunda öğretmen adaylarının (n=572) mesleki etik dışı davranışların farkında oldukları saptanmıştır. Araştırmada kullanılan ölçekte yer alan ifadeler bazında bir genel değerlendirilme yapıldığında, öğretmen adaylarının "Öğrencilere sözlü tacizde bulunma (küfürlü konuşma vb.)" maddesini en yüksek düzeyde etik dışı davranış olarak buldukları; "Kendi öğrencilerine okul dışında ücretli ders verme" maddesini ise en düşük düzeyde etik dışı davranış olarak değerlendirdikleri saptanmıştır. Aday öğretmenlerin sınıf düzeyi, öğrenim gördükleri bölüm veya etik dersi alıp almama durumları istatistiksel olarak anlamlı fark göstermezken, cinsiyetin anlamlı bir fark yarattığı görülmüştür. Araştırmadan elde edilen sonuçlara göre aday öğretmenlerin mesleklerine ilişkin etik dışı davranışları onaylamadıkları söylenebilir. Eğitim fakültelerinin ders içeriklerine bakıldığı zaman meslek etiği dersinin pek fazla yer almadığı görülse de öğretmen adaylarımızın mesleki etik ilkelerin farkında oldukları ifade edilebilir. Ancak bu kendi haline bırakılamayacak kadar önemli bir konudur. Bu nedenle mesleki etiğin sistemli ve bilinçli bir şekilde geleceğin öğretmenlerine kazandırılması yönünde akademik çalışmaların yapılması gerekmektedir. Sonuç olarak öğretmen adaylarında mesleki etik davranışların yerleştirilmesini desteklemek için özellikle öğretmen yetiştiren kurumlarda bu yönde çalışma başlatılması ve uygulayıcılara yönelik önerilmektedir. taslak programlar hazırlanıp kullanıma sunulması

The aim of this study is to determine the views of teacher candidates on unethical behavior related to the profession of teaching. 572 prospective teachers from different departments of a private university participated in the research voluntarily. It is determined that teacher candidates (n=572) are aware of professional unethical behavior. The teacher candidates regarded “verbal assault of students (swearing etc.)” as the highest level of unethical behavior and “tutoring one`s own students privately outside school” as the lowest. No significant statistical differences were determined between teacher candidates resulting from their total points; the scale was based on the class level, whether they had taken a course with “ethics” in the title, and departmental variances. However, significant statistical differences were determined according to their gender variance. According to the results obtained from the research, it can be said that the candidate teachers do not approve the unethical behaviors related to their profession. When the course contents of the education faculties are examined, it can be seen that the professional ethics lesson does not take much place. In order to support the placement of professional ethical behavior in teacher candidates it may be advisable to initiate work in this direction and to prepare and present draft programs for practitioners The profession of teaching is the educator of all other professions, the topic of ethics gains special emphasis in this profession (Obuz, 2009). Thus, the topic of ethics in the profession of teaching is a very sensitive subject that professionals need to place special emphasis on. An educator must be knowledgeable about and sensitive to the subject of ethics in addition to being knowledgeable about his/her area of expertise, his/her occupation, and having a liberal education. In addition to their roles as teaching and educating, teachers also have the duty of being role models for their students. The educators, who are the main element of education, are expected to act in line with the principles of professional behavior during the process of educating new generations. The ethical principles of the profession of teaching serve as a guide that enables the educators to make the correct decisions when faced with numerous dilemmas. In the light of this information; the main purpose of this study is to determine the views of teacher candidates regarding unethical behavior in the profession of education. To this end, the researchers sought answers to the questions below: (1) What are the views of teacher candidates regarding unethical behavior in the profession of education? (2) Do the views of the teacher candidates regarding unethical behavior in the profession of education differ significantly based on the variables of gender, department, and grade and ethics education? In this research, one of the descriptive research methods, the survey method, was used. The population of the study comprises a total of 644 teacher candidates of a private University in Northern Cyprus. Due to there being not much difficulty accessing the whole target universe, and because the chosen research model was the survey method, and in order to collect more reliable data, the researchers did not choose to take a sample from the study. The data of the research is collected via “Unethical Behavior Scale (UBS)” (Yılmaz&Altınkurt, 2009). This is a Likert-style scale and comprises a total of 45 items each describing a different unethical behavior. An analysis of the responses of the teacher candidates to the UBS shows that educator candidates view the phrases in the scale as “definitely unethical” (M=4.47, ss=0.39). A similar result was obtained in the study by Yılmaz and Altınkurt (2009), who developed the UBS. It can be argued that these results support the findings of the current study. While the teacher candidates’ views on unethical behavior do not demonstrate significant variance based on the variables of grade [t(570)= - .970, p˃.05] or the presence of a previously taken ethics course [t(570)= 1.643, p˃.05]. There is statistically significant difference between the views of male and female teacher candidates regarding unethical behavior [t(570)= 3.991, p˂.05]. Accordingly, it was demonstrated that male students (M=4.52, ss=0.35) are more sensitive to unethical behavior compared to female students (M=4.39, ss=0.43). Contrary to general belief that women are more ethical in general, different comments about the topic exist in the literature. In addition to views that support this view in the literature (Altınkurt&Yılmaz, 2011), there are other studies that demonstrate the opposite view (Pelit&Güçer, 2006; Chen & Tang, 2006; ArslanNamlı, 2017), and even studies (Yılmaz&Altınkurt, 2009) that demonstrate no difference in terms of views between the genders. In this study, no statistically significant difference was observed between the views of the students based on the variable of grade. According to the results of this study, it can be argued that neither firstgrade nor fourth-grade students approve of unethical behavior. A similar finding was obtained in relation to the dimensions of job-related responsibilities and relations with the colleagues in Pelit and Güçer’s (2006) study. There are also different findings in the literature (Manolova&Kozak-Özbay, 2012). Looking at the variable of the presence of a previously taken ethics course, no statistically significant difference was observed between the views of ethical behavior of students who had previously taken an ethics course and those who had not. Looking at the literature, it can be seen that there are studies that draw attention to the fact that an occupational ethics course must be included in the academic curriculums of schools of education (Bowen, Besette, & Chan, 2006; Glanzer& Ream, 2007; Manolova, 2011; Karaköse, 2007; Sileo, Sileo, & Pierce, 2008; Karaköse&Kocabaş, 2009; Erdem&Şimşek, 2013; Karataş, 2013). When the views of the educator candidates in this study are compared based on their departments, no statistically significant difference was observed [t(570)= 0.323, p˃.05]. There are studies that support this finding (Yılmaz&Altınkurt, 2009). The nature of the profession of teaching and the similarity of education given in both departments might be considered to be the reason for the absence of a statistically significant difference. The profession itself may also be considered a source of motivation in this regard. Based on the findings of this study, it can be argued that educator candidates do not approve of unethical behavior in their professions. In other words, the educator candidates who participated in this study perceived the behavior described as unethical in the scale as “highly unethical behavior.” This makes one conclude that the level of awareness of educator candidates about ethics in the profession of teaching is high, which can be seen as an advantage in preparing future educators for their professions. However, as indicated by Aydın (2003), in some cases, even knowledge of ethical principles does not keep individuals from engaging in unethical behavior. Thus, simply including an ethics course would not be sufficient in itself. To help educator candidates internalize ethics in addition to gaining knowledge of it, numerous methods, practices, and procedures such as case studies and exemplary cases should be used. In this way, it is believed that the ethics course provided would be more effective and better results would be obtained. Intheprocess of ethical decision making, individuals refer to their own internalized valu emechanisms. At thispoint, based on the findings of this study, another study on this topic would be helpful to increase the level of knowledge of the educators. By repeating the study with the firstgrade students in the current study when they reach the fourth grade, it would be possible to determine whether or not their perceptions of ethics have changed over time. The main subject of this study has the potential to be researched via additional qualitative research methods as well in the future studies. The authors believe that with such an approach more insights can be gained about the subject. Looking at the curricula of the schools of education it can be seen that most schools do not have an occupational ethics course in their curricula. It can be recommended to take action in this direction and draft programs can be prepared for implementation in schools. In addition, the relevant ministries, universities, non-governmental organizations, andeducators’ syndicates should cooperate to start an initiative with the goal of documenting occupational ethics for the profession of teaching.