Investigation of the changes in ethical understandings of childrencaused by application of philosophical ethics in early childhoodprogram

In this study, since it was aimed to explore the ethical understanding and experiences of preschool children and to examine the changes in their ethical understanding and discourses after the intervention in depth, the phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research methods, was adopted. The study group of the research consisted of 6 children aged 60-72 months attending a preschool education institution in Çankaya district of Ankara province. In the first step of the study, the "Philosophical Ethics in Early Childhood (PEECh)" programme, which will be implemented to explore and develop children's understanding of ethics, was translated into Turkish. In the second step, short scenarios consisting of ethical dilemmas and enabling children to understand ethical questions and generate ideas were designed and open-ended questions were asked to children in this context. The nine-session Philosophical Ethics in Early Childhood (PEECh) programme was implemented for six weeks. After the implementation of the programme, the interviews with the children were repeated. In the study, deductive and inductive methods of content analysis were used together. As a result of the content analysis, the interviews were analysed under the categories of fairness, empathy and perspective taking, exclusion and inclusion of peers, problem solving and don't know/irrelevant responses. As a result of the study, it was concluded that the "Philosophical Ethics in Early Childhood" programme had a positive impact on children's understanding of ethics, including empathy and perspective- taking skills, problem-solving skills, and the ability to discuss ethical concepts.