Türkiye’deki erken çocukluk eğitimi üzerine yazılmış lisansüstü tezlerin bir içerik analizi

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the descriptive characteristics, research topics and methodological procedures of master's theses and doctoral dissertations regarding early childhood education in Turkey. Within the scope of the current study, 931 Master's theses and 171 doctoral dissertations were analyzed according to university, institute, department, publication year, academic title of the advisor, research topic, sample group, location in which the study took place, research setting of the study, type of research, instruments, statistical analysis, and sampling methods. The study covers theses published from 1986 to 2016, and a content analysis method was implemented for data analysis. As expected, the current study found that students were the most frequently used subject groups in both MS theses (37.39%) and PhD dissertations (53.39%). In the MS theses, researchers mostly preferred research topics regarding the education of young children (29.95%) whereas in PhD. dissertations, researchers mainly focused on developmental issues (32.78%). Nearly, all the graduate theses were conducted in city centers and central districts.

A Content Analysis of Articles in the Turkish Early Childhood Education Context

“…In the findings of their study, the most frequently seen research topics were socialemotional skills/behaviors, language/foreign language education, play in preschool, and science teaching/environment. Additionally, similar to the findings of studies from theses and dissertations (Ahi & Kıldan, 2013;Demirtaş İlhan & Tantekin Erden, 2019), the findings in the current study showed that physical development was the least common subject within the category of developmental subjects amongst articles examined (n = 8).…”

“…Educational subjects were found to be the prevailing choice in approximately 40% of the articles. This finding parallels other studies which examined theses and dissertations from early childhood education (Ahi & Kıldan, 2013;Demirtaş İlhan & Tantekin Erden, 2019). Amongst the educational subjects, special education/inclusion (n = 43) and science education (n = 30) were the two most commonly seen subjects.…”

“…Children were also found to be the most popular choice of sample group (36.4%) among the examined articles. This was expected due to similar studies finding children as the most commonly chosen sample demographic as well as children's education being the focal point in this field (Ahi & Kıldan, 2013;Altun et al, 2011;Demirtaş İlhan & Tantekin Erden, 2019;Yılmaz & Altınkurt, 2012). Also, when examining the sample groups of children further, it was revealed that the most popular age group of study were children 60 to 72 months old with the average age of children investigated being 62 months.…”

“…Similar results were found in other articles (Aydoğdu, 2015;Hüseyinbaş et al, 2018;Dönmez & Gündoğdu, 2016;Yılmaz & Altınkurt, 2012). On the other hand, the number of theses and dissertations that did not specify a research methodology was low (Demirtaş İlhan & Tantekin Erden, 2019).…”

“…Studies which have been carried out for the purpose of investigating scientific research in their respective field for a given period of time, can provide a framework for future studies within their area. There are these types of national studies, which investigate early childhood education, but those studies either focus on theses and/or dissertations only (Ahi & Kıldan, 2013;Altun et al, 2011;Can Yaşar & Aral, 2011;Demirtaş İlhan & Tantekin Erden, 2019;Durukan et al, 2015;Kaytez & Durualp, 2014) or focus on articles from academic journals but have limited content and scope (Gülay Ogelman & Güngör, 2015;Oğuz & Erbil Kaya, 2017;Öztürk Yılmaztekin & Olgan, 2013;Sarı & Altun, 2018;Şentürk et al, 2015;Yılmaz & Altınkurt, 2012). All of the studies regarding this subject have one thing in common, which is that they state a need for more comprehensive research as well as recommend future studies for working with larger sample sizes.…”