Citizenship Perceptions of University Students

Abstract

Citizenship has become one of the important topics discussed in especially developed countries by policy makers and various stakeholders in recent years. Some important reasons behind it are the political, economic and social uneasiness throughout the world in both collectivistic and individualistic societies. The current study aims at looking at the citizenship perception among university students in one of those collectivistic countries. The participants answered the question 'what does citizenship mean for you?' and the data was analyzed by giving descriptive statistics using the quantitative data analysis software, SPSS. The value items given as choices to the students were; equality, freedom, social order, national security, a world at peace, respect for tradition, respect for privacy, social justice, independent, protecting the environment, loyalty, obedient, helpful, and responsible. The participants were categorized in two different faculties which were faculty of humanities and social sciences and faculty of management and administrative sciences. The results show that the students from faculty of humanities and social sciences have tendency towards values represented in individualistic societies while defining citizenship. On the other hand, students of faculty of management and administrative sciences showed greater tendency towards the values represented in collectivistic countries. Another finding of the study was that females highly prioritized all value items compared to male participants. Turkey is considered to be a collectivistic country however the results show that majority of the participants prioritize values represented in individualistic nations. Further studies need to be conducted in order to find out whether there has been a shift from being a collectivistic society or not.

National Identity and Neighbour Country Perceptions of Pre-Service Social Studies Teachers – The Turkish Case

“…Equality, freedom, social order, national security, a world at peace, respect for tradition, respect for privacy, social justice, independence, protecting the environment, loyalty, obedient, helpful, and responsible are common words that participants of several research (Akar and Aschenberger, 2016;Yiğit, 2016) about Turkish citizenship introduced us. It is seen from here that, Turkish people's citizenship perceptions are mainly emphasized public good over individual benefits, collectivity over self-interest and responsibilities over rights.…”

Does higher education change value perceptions?

“…While Weber talks about academic value of value freedom (Moosmayer & Siems, 2012), other scholars talked about the importance of teaching values in academy (Bennis & O'Toole, 2005). In today's world, there are numerous factors affecting value perceptions of individuals, like family environments, friendships, social media, news, and so on (Yigit, 2016). However, the importance of Higher Education institutions comes from their being more scientific institutions compared to other factors that might result in changing value patterns using critical thinking skills and usually those are the individuals who rule their societies.…”

Value Priorities of Public and Private University Students

“…Research on the role of values on one's life has shown that the values a person holds predict his level of social contact with other people who are not the member of their communities (Sagiv and Schwartz 1995). There are studies conducted on specific values, such as religious values, cultural values and social values and their relationship with the experiences of university students (Yeh, 2 Carter and Pieterse 2004;McCollum 2005;Yigit, 2016;Yigit and Tarman, 2016). These studies tell us that the value students bring with them to university have significant effects on their behaviors.…”