Erken yaşta kültürlerarası yabancı dil öğretimi/öğrenimi: Türkiye'de öğretmen eğitiminin durumu

The general objective of this study is to explore the current situation of foreign language teacher education programs in Turkey in terms of the place given to intercultural approach, especially intercultural language teaching/learning in early ages. With regard to this aim, sequential exploratory design, which includes qualitative and quantitative researches in a sequential manner, was adopted. Determined by criterion sampling, the participants of this research in the qualitative stage consists of two instructors in the 2016-2017 academic year in French as Foreign Language Teacher Education Program in Turkey. In the quantitative part, the sampling included 255 foreign language instructors in French, German, and English as Foreign Languages Programs in Turkey (2017-2018 academic year.) As the data collection tools, semi-structured interviews, observations and field notes were used in the qualitative part. In the quantitative part, the Questionnaire for Intercultural Foreign Language Teaching in Early Ages developed based on qualitative data was used. Qualitative data were analyzed by content analysis, quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive analysis. As a result of the study, it was found out that the intercultural approach hardly finds a truly important place in the foreign language teacher education programs. Therefore, it is suggested to implement a course regarding Early Intercultural Foreign Language Teaching in programs in order to help teacher candidates to have their students acquire/develop intercultural communication skills at an early age and it is considered that initial and inservice education of teachers about interculturality is necessary. Keywords: Teacher education, Early intercultural foreign language teaching/learning, Intercultural approach, Intercultural communication competence, Exploratory sequential design.