The realization level of children's right to participate in the context of democratic attitude : A comparative case study

The research is designed as a comparative case study from multiple case studies, examining the realization levels of children's participation rights, democratic practices (democratic context) and teacher beliefs and thoughts that shape the realization level of participation rights in the classes with high and low democratic attitudes. The study group of the research consisted of two classes with high and low democratic attitudes determined by contradictory status sampling from purposeful sampling methods of fourth grade branches of a primary school selected by typical case sampling in Şahinbey district of Gaziantep province. The data were obtained through observation and interview methods. In this respect, 160 hours of observation were performed in each class for 80 hours. After the observation process was completed, interviews were conducted with the class teachers in the study group and eight students from each class (16 students in total). During the analysis of research data; In order to determine the realization level of children's right to participate, both content and descriptive analysis, content analysis were conducted to determine the democratic context and teacher beliefs and thoughts. Within the scope of the research, 12 different regulations have been determined regarding the realization level of children's right to participate, one of which is based on legal regulations. In addition, it has been found that democratic attitudes differ in the realization levels of children's right to participate in high and low classes. In this respect, it was found that in the class where the democratic attitude is high, more regulations were made to realize the children's right to participate and the level of realization of children's right to participate was higher than the class where the democratic attitude was low. The results of the study showed that the democratic context, which thresholds the realization process of children's right to participate, shows that the class with a high democratic attitude is better in terms of democratic context than the class with a low democratic attitude. In this direction, it is determined that more practices that implement democratic values and principles are employed in the class where the democratic attitude is high and a democratic class environment is tried to be created. In addition, it was concluded that teacher beliefs and thoughts, which shape the realization of children's right to participate in classes with low and high democratic attitudes, are an important factor in realizing the participation of children in this direction. Key Words: Children's Right to Participation, Children's Rights, Children's Rights Education, Realization of Children's Right to Participation, Democratic Attitude, Primary Education