The children subjects in the texts of the secondary school Turkish textbooks

In the Turkish education, textbooks are used as a tool in order to develop the reading, writing, speaking and listening skills of students. Children identify with the heroes that they encounter in the texts of the textbooks, especially with the child ones close to their ages. In this study, the "child subjects (child heroes)" in the secondary school Turkish textbooks of the 2020-2021 academic year have been tackled and examined with various characteristics of the students. No matter how old the child is, he/she identifies with the hero/es in the text that he/she reads. Turkish textbook preparers should pay attention to this fact in the selection of text. In this regard, in our study, the characteristics of child subjects in the narrative texts placed in the secondary school (5th-8th classes) Turkish textbooks of the 2020-2021 academic year have been examined in terms of various aspects; in this context, the typical characteristics of child subjects/ the values/terms that they represent, the distribution of heroes in the texts according to gender, their active and passive situations against the events/conditions/conflicts, their problem solving abilities, the places that they live, their situations of being primary, secondary or figurative person, their situations of being realistic/fantastic characters and the activities/questions/instructions for the child subjects in the textbooks have been examined. In addition to developing four basic language skills in teaching Turkish as a native language, values education is also extremely important. The values education is also done through texts (especially heroes/child subjects). For this reason, the examination of the child subjects in terms of their characteristics that they own/the values that they represent will guide the Turkish textbook preparers. Accordingly, in this study based on the question of "What are the primary characteristics of the child subjects in the narrative texts in the Turkish textbooks?", the "document scanning" model, one of the qualitative research methods, has been used. Through the analysis of the findings obtained at the end of the study the characteristics of the child subjects in the texts in the secondary school Turkish textbooks have been determined and the Turkish textbooks have been evaluated in terms of the text selection and usage. The data obtained as a result of the research have been presented in tables and interpreted. In line with the evaluation of the child subjects in the narrative texts in Turkish textbooks and the results obtained, it has been pointed to the various facts related with the Turkish textbooks and text selection and usage and made suggestions on them. Keywords: hero, narrative text, child subject, main hero, Turkish textbook.