Pedagogical competencies of educators / religious officials who take part in religous education of pre-school children (4-6 age group)

The wrong approaches and practices in relation to religious education lead to grave consequences, as has happened many times in our country. This shows that the state and the official policies to be implemented should have a more active and decisive role in religious education. In our country, it is the duty of the Religious Affairs Department to implement non-formal religious education and to ensure the follow-up and control of these trainings. The Presidency of Religious Affairs aims to provide religious education to people from all walks and ages. One of the institutions of the Religious Affairs Directorate where non-formal religious education is given is the Qur'an Courses. In this context, with the removal of the age limit in the Qur'an Courses, the Presidency of Religious Affairs has opened Qur'an Courses in order to eliminate the deficiencies of religious education in the pre-school period of children aged 4-6. The implementation of the opening of the Qur'an Courses for the 4-6 age group, which started piloting in 2013, has expanded rapidly and has become widespread. The rapid opening of the courses opened by the Presidency of Religious Affairs regarding the religious education of 4-6 age group, which is very important, brings with it some drawbacks. In particular, it is a matter of serious debate whether educators, one of the main actors of this practice, are pedagogically competent. Because, it is known that there is no higher education institution or a program in the institution that educates teachers for religious education to be given to children aged 4-6. In this context, in this study, pedagogical and occupational competence of educators in these courses are emphasized. The pedagogical and professional competence levels of the trainers who took part in the Quran Courses of 4-6 age group were tried to be determined within the framework of the data obtained from interviews with 20 trainers in Orhangazi and İznik districts of Bursa. Firstly, information was given about pre-school education and religious education of the child and then the answers given to the questions asked during the interviews with the educators were taken into consideration. 18 open-ended questions were used to determine educators' knowledge about their specialties in the branches, child psychology and child development areas, and information about methods and approaches related to education and training.