The opinions of teachers who work in primary schools with multigrade classes and independent classes relating to social skills of students

Standardized education is hard in every region of our country because of the geographical difficulties, dispersed settlement, lack of population and transportation etc. One of the solutions to remove these difficulties is multigrade class teaching. In multigrade class teaching, more than a class is being conducted by a single teacher in the same class. This application contains its own unique situations like all other education and training applications. The students who are studying in the multigrade classes and independent classes differ from each other in many topics since the differences of the implementation have. It is a matter of curiosity that the class structure can be effective in the acquisition of social skills. Social skills; are those skills that give students positive behaviors and help them get away from negative behaviors. The aim of this research is to determine teacher opinions on the social skills of students who are in primary schools with combined classes and independent classes. For this purpose, 10 teachers who work in multigrade classes and 10 teachers who work in independent classes in Pazarcık in Kahramanmaraş are determined as the study group. In the survey, the data were collected by the answers given in the interview form. Content analysis was done in this survey which is a qualitative research. According to the results of the research, both multigrade class teachers and independent class teachers generally reached that "the independent classes have more advantageous than multigrade classes in terms of the development of the social skills." Also, it has been determined that more than one branch is in one, students in different age groups to study in the same class and the crowd of class presence are seen as a disadvantage in terms of children's social skills development by both independent and multigrade classroom teachers.