Assesment of practicess in early elementry classrooms form into Turkish: Evaluation of preschool teachers practices

The purpose of this study is to adapt the Assesment of Practices in Early Elementary Classroom (APEEC) Observation Form, which was developed to measure individualized and developmentally appropriate practices in educational classrooms from preschool to primary school 3rd grade, into Turkish and to evaluate preschool teachers' practices in the classroom in terms of developmentally appropriate practices. This research is based on a mixed research method in which quantitative and qualitative data are used together. In the research, "explanatory sequential design" model and "extreme and outlier" sampling method from purposive sampling types were used. In the study, the Developmentally Appropriate Practices Belief Scale and the Assesment of Practices in Early Elementary Classroom (APEEC) Observation Form adapted in this study were used as data collection tools. The study group consisted of 144 preschool teachers working in 14 independent kindergartens and 16 primary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in Alanya District of Antalya Province in the 2022-2023 academic year. When all sub-dimensions of the Developmentally Appropriate Practices Belief Scale were analyzed according to the demographic characteristics of the teachers, it was found that there was a difference in the beliefs of the teachers according to "age" and "working time". On the other hand, observations were made in the classrooms of a total of 6 teachers, 3 teachers who scored the highest and 3 teachers who scored the lowest on the Developmentally Appropriate Practices Belief Scale, using the APEEC Observation Form with a co-observer, and it was determined that the teachers who scored both the lowest and the highest on the Developmentally Appropriate Practices Belief Scale also scored low on the APEEC Observation Form. As a result of the research, it is possible to say that teacher developmentally appropriate beliefs and practices are complex and inseparable from each other. In line with these results, in order to evaluate classroom practices from the perspective of developmentally appropriate practices, it is important to adapt the APEEC Observation Form into Turkish to evaluate the quality of developmentally appropriate practices in the classroom. It is also thought to be a good guide for the dissemination of developmentally appropriate practices in Turkey.