Today, the academic curriculum of any educational institution cannot stand apart from the formation of human values. “Value‘ is a subjective concept that forms the basis of the private reasons on which individuals make choices between the available alternatives in their lives. In many countries, there exists a serious debate about how students acquire their values. In this regard, values are the decisive elements affecting the behaviour of individuals, thus, studies on people's value tendencies are important. This study aimed to identify and rank the importance given by students, in two different countries, to the values stated in the classification scales created by Rokeach and Schwartz. The study was carried out in the education departments of three universities: Kaunas University of Applied Sciences in Lithuania, and Aksaray University and Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, both of which are in Turkey. In order to determine the level of importance given to the values by the pre-service trainee teachers, a Likert-type scale, consisting of 78 items, was used. The value scales of Rokeach and Schwartz were used as a basis for constructing the instrument for the identification and ranking of values. In addition, some universal and national value items were added to these classifications.
Whether on a national or an international level, it is important to settle how values are comprehended and justified. This study investigates how university students in Turkey and Lithuania make sense of certain values. The study has a pattern of a case study. The respondent selection was made by benefiting from the studies conducted in both countries. The investigation reveals how three values (family, social justice, and freedom) were understood by university students in both countries, and how they were justified. The data were collected through one of the qualitative research methods, the semistructured interview. The respondents included 32 students from Lithuania, and 40 students from Turkey. The data were analyzed using the content analysis technique. The results of this study suggest that values can be perceived differently both in individual and social platforms, and that, depending on the part of the society they emerged from, values can be justified by various points of view rooting from religion, tradition, and culture.
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