Araştırmacı ve Öğretmen Görüşleri Açısından Okul Öncesi Sınıflarındaki Kitap Merkezlerinin Çeşitli Özelliklerinin İncelenmesi

Preschool institutions are among the centers in which children can easily come face to face with qualitative books in term of their contextual, structural and educational issues. Therefore, the richness of book centers regarding features and functionality gives rise to the highest levels of various benefits that children can obtain via these kinds of qualitative books. This study aims to reveal current position of book centers in preschool classrooms in term of their contextual, structural and educational features based on teacher views. Additionally, it was aimed to investigate how equipment of book centers would be effective on children’s preferences regarding frequencies of their visits and time they spent on these centers. Public preschools located in district centers of Izmir were used to determine participants based on stratified cluster sampling. In total 87 preschool teachers from 45 preschools participated in the study. The study is a qualitative research including both interviews and also observations. A data collection tool, called Book Center Evaluation Form formed by researchers, which contains 4 sections and 23 questions, was used to conduct face to face interviews with teachers and to observe classrooms. As a result, both teachers and researchers reported that books were required to be improved in terms of their variety and book centers were not positioned independently from other centers in the class. Although for some issues teachers and researchers agreed upon variety, design and contextual features of book centers, teachers reported that book centers had more adequate qualities than researchers did. When book centers were equipped and designed well, children preferred working there.