Evaluation of Early Childhood Education in Turkey

Qualified early childhood education are needed for the holistic development of the children's cognitive, linguistic, motor and social-emotional skills and improve them towards their needs, interests and abilities. Even... [ view full abstract ]

Qualified early childhood education are needed for the holistic development of the children's cognitive, linguistic, motor and social-emotional skills and improve them towards their needs, interests and abilities. Even though the National Early Childhood Education Program in Turkey strengthened in 2013 with the cooperation of professionals from universities and pre-school teachers, qualitative preparation of a program alone may not be sufficient. When the program is not underhanded or comprehended by the teacher, problems may occur during the implementation. With this in mind, the goal of this study is to determine the opinions of the academicians about the implementation of the National Early Childhood Education Program. The study group is comprised of the lecturers working on the Early Childhood Education undergraduate program at universities from different geographical regions of Turkey. The lecturers were reached via e-mail and they filled out the “Form for the Evaluation of the National Early Childhood Education”. In order to discuss the difficulties and challenges during the implementation of the program, a face-to-face interview was also conducted with a group of selected lecturers who filled the form. The opinions of the lecturers were categorized in terms of philosophy of preschool education program, teaching strategies, communication, family participation, integration and assessment. Data were analyzed based on title, seniority and program experience of the lecturers. We discuss the findings and also provide suggestions on the challenges and issues that need to be addressed for the provision of effective Early Childhood Education. 

Keywords: early childhood education, early childhood program, teacher, assessment.