Analysis of moral and social rule understandings of Ahiska Turks and Turkish children according to cognitive styles on the kindergarten and primary school 1ST grade

Every individual has his own method or methods of using knowledge. The cognitive style is concerned with how the individual thinks. The cognitive style, related to the individual's way of thinking, influences all the developmental areas of children as well as affecting social and moral rules. The social rules that dictate what is acceptable as a result of daily life, explain the rules of the particular environment. The individual develops later the sense of moral and social rule. The social environment has great influence on this. In this current study, 110 Ahıska Turks and 110 Turkish children, total of 220 children took part in questionnaire for the purpose of examining moral and social rule perceptions according to cognitive styles of first grade children of preschool children and first graders. In order to measure the cognitive styles of Ahıska Turks and Turkish children, the Cognitive Style Scale for Children in Kansas Preschool Period was used, Smetana Moral and the Social Rule Scale were used to measure the moral and social rule conception. In addition, data were gathered through 'Personal Information Form' developed by the researcher to examine some variables such as age, gender. The obtained data were evaluated by nonparametric analysis, Kruskal Wallis and Mann Whitney U tests. The findings obtained from the research shows that age, gender, and sibling number of do not affect children's cognitive style dimension and moral and social norms. There is no difference in Ahıska Turks and Turkish children in terms of the number of mistakes in the Kansas Awareness Intrinsic Scale having large families at the family structure option, but Ahıska Turks children differed in their time of response. Similarly, there is a significant difference in the number of errors according to the age of mother and father of Turkish children, but Ahıska Turks does not show any variation in the age of the parents. There is no differentiation in response times. Therefore, data suggests that, understandings of moral and social rulesdo not difter between fast directing, reflexive andfast directing, reflexive and impulsive Ahıska Turks and Turkish children who attend preschool and 1st grade, understanding of moral and social rules is not different. Keywords: Moral and Social Rule, Ahıska Turks, Cognitive Style, Child