Preschool Age Children’s Views about Primary School

AbstractStarting primary education is one of the most important changes that children encounter in early childhood. Moreover, especially within the last twenty years, as an outcome of the idea that children are active learners, listening to children's ideas about their learning, lives, and experiences has gained importance. In this sense, this study is thought to be significant in terms of its aim to analyze the transition to primary school accordi ng to the thoughts of children and to offer suggestions for preschool education. For this purpose, the study was conducted with 55 children who were attending 7 independent kindergarten schools in Aydin city center. The participants were selected by a systematic sampling method. The study was conducted using a phenomenological design. For the data collection, a mosaic approach includi ng different verbal arid visual techniques that allowed the children to express themselves comfortably was used. The data were analyzed by descriptive analysis using the NVivo Qualitative Analysis program. According to the findings of the study, preschool age chi Idren described primary school as big, crowded, complex, and distant. They referred to their family, teachers, and television as information sources. Further, they thought that there were many rules in primary school and they could never play. When the dialogues were considered in general, nearly all of the interviews included negative thoughts. It is thought that this case stems from the lack of right information about primary school.KeywordsTransition to Primary School, Readiness, Preschool Education, Mosaic Approach, Phenomenology.Starting primary education is one of the most important changes that children encounter in early childhood (Fabian & Dunlop, 2006). For a student attending school for the first time, school is a new social environment full of new things. In addition to being together with other children from different ages, new rules and developmental tasks to be achieved are also included in the child s life as outcomes of this social environment (Isikli Erdogan & Simsek, 2014).For a child to start primary education without any problems, s/he has to achieve the necessary developmental tasks. Senemoglu (1994) lists the skills that a child should gain in his/her development as self-awareness, awareness of his or her own culture and other cultures, social skills, communication skills, perceptional-kinetic skills, analytical thinking and problem solving skills, and creativity and esthetical skills. For Oktay and Unutkan (2005), children who will start primary education should express themselves, be aware of their responsibilities, not experience sadness at leaving home or the family, have good communication with the teacher, have friendships, keep themselves clean, dress on their own, wait in a line on their own, protect themselves during course breaks, and be able to sit at a desk and focus their attention.All the elements such as changing environment, curriculum, school culture, pedagogical approaches, and classroom communication are related to how the transition to primary school affects a child (Fabian & Dunlop, 2006). This information highlights that children's adequate self-awareness and awareness of the school environment are the skills necessary for their successful transition to the primary school. These skills are related with primary school readiness in the literature. Guler (2001) defined the concept of readiness, which can also be called school maturity, as a child being prepared to meet the requirements of primary school in terms of physical, intellectual, and social skills. Oktay (1983) defines the concept as a child's being ready to learn easily and successfully without having any emotional compulsion. For Kocyigit (2009), school readiness is a concept that can change from child to child, can be defined according to different ages, and includes the child's maturation in all developmental areas with a balanced basis, as well as having a performance that shows all the necessary characteristics for learning and intellectual development: language development, socio-emotional development, kinetic development, and self-care skills are criteria for school readiness. …