Investigation of primary school teachers' opinions about village institutes

After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, one of the issues which was given the most importance by the founders was education. The goal of education is to raise citizens who make up the society and keep the social life going. Particular significance was given to education so that the republic was embraced by the public and applications were conveyed to the public. Naturally, education had to be carried out by teachers, and it is observed that there were attempts to seek different educational methods since a big majority of the public had a low level of education and lived in the rural areas. Village institutes were a product of this attempt. Village institues were founded on 17 April 1940 based on the Law of Village Institutes no 3803 in order to raise the educators to inform the villagers and to develop the village. Via education, the village was going to revive and with the equality of opportunity in education, a developed, civilised, and modern public was going to be created. An educational system which focussed on production, participatory, student-centered and in which art was significant was adopted. This different approach of village institues aimed at a multi- disciplinary improvement in education which adopted a democratic awareness that included physical and mental aspects of the individual. Since village institute system was a completely national movement, it led to the nationalisation of the local aspects of the culture. At the institutes, activities like folk dances, music, and drama were identified and performed. Village institutes were combined with the first teaching schools and closed on 24 January 1954. The justifications for the closure were that students were not raised as nationalists, that they were taught behaviours giving harm to the country, and that girls and boys were educated together, which was immoral. Although it has been more than 50 years since the village institutes were founded, it is stil being discussed. This is because village institutes were not only educational foundations, they were created with the aim to make up the deficiencies in the cultural, social and economic areas and solve the problems. As a result, they are still a current subject. In this research, the awareness of today's primary school teachers about village institutes is studied. The study is based on Village Institutes Assesssment Scale including 25 questions with demographic features. In the study, general scanning model is composed of all the form tutors working in Susurluk, Balıkesir in the second term in 2015-2016 year. In the study, a questionnaire was used. The replies to the questioonaire were analysed and interpreted by using SPSS for Windows 22.0 (IBM) program. As a result of the research, the hypothesis that the opinions of today's teachers on village institutes vary according to demographic features is partly accepted. The points of views of contemporary teachers are changing depending on gender, age, experience and degree. It is believed that the research will be more meaningful if the findings are used as a guide for the units which prepare teacher education programs.