Investigation of the preschool expressed in students' parents

Preschool education institutions constitute the first step in the education process and play an important role in determining the school perceptions of children. It is necessary to know the facts created by the stakeholders in this period which is considered critical in terms of various development areas. The aim of this study is to determine the views of the parents about the kindergarten, to examine the necessity of the kindergarten, the choice of teachers and their contribution to the development areas, to add depth to the subject by revealing the connections between the kindergarten-nursery and kindergarten-primary school. The meaning of the kindergarten was examined based on the parents' own lives and experiences. A semi-structured interview form was used as a data collection tool in the study which was designed with the phenomenology design of the qualitative research methods. The study group consisted of 20 volunteer parents whose children were studying in state preschools in Gaziantep province. Convenience sampling technique of the purposeful sampling methods was used to determine the research group. The data obtained from the interviews with the parents were analysed by content analysis method. According to the results of the study, all of the parents considered preschool education as necessary and they stated that children went into a change in terms of various development areas (cognitive-self-care-motor skills-linguistic-social-emotional) after the preschool education. In the study, it was seen that the expectations of the parents from the kindergarten were met and the preference of kindergarten instead of the nursery was at the forefront because of economic and academic activities. Although the parents stated that education in the kindergarten should be given by female teachers since they regarded it as a second home, they were either neutral or support male teachers in the primary school because of the increase in academic activities. At the last stage of the research, it was stated that the general satisfaction of the kindergarten name was good but alternative names could take place.