The effect of multicultural education-supporting activities on preschool children's and parents' opinions on individual differences

The aim of this research is to reveal the views of pre-school children and their parents regarding individual differences through multicultural education supporting activities that are prepared for preschool children and their parents. For this purpose, in the reseacrh designed with a blended learning data were collected from the children (and their parents) attending kindergartens within the primary school affiliated to the Ministry of National Education of Eğil district, Diyarbakır province in the 2023-2024 academic year. The study group consists of 60 children (30 for experimental and 30 for control) and their parents who agreed to participate in the study voluntarily. During the research process, Multicultural Education Supporting Activities developed by the researcher were applied for 10 weeks and twice in each week. The dependent variable of the research was "perspective on individual differences" and the independent variable was "Activities to Support Multicultural Education". As a data collection tool; respect for individual differences scale, views on different cultures family scale, views on different cultures teacher scale, personal information form and semi-structured parent interview form were used. In the analysis process of quantitative data, Independent Groups t-Test and Dependent Groups t-Test were used; Descriptive Analysis and Content Analysis were applied in the analysis of qualitative data. In the quantitative results of the study, it was concluded that there were significant differences in favor of the post-test in the total scores of the respect for individual differences scale, views on different cultures teacher scale, and views on different cultures family scale. This result reveals that "Activities that Support Multicultural Education" have a positive impact on preschool children's views on individual differences. Moreover, according to the qualitative findings of the study, it can be concluded that "Activities that Support Multicultural Education" have a positive impact on parents' views on individual differences.