Examination of the texts included in the second grade primary school Turkish textbook according to children's literature criteria

During childhood, when development and change occur very rapidly compared to other stages of life, language development is rapid. Children's books are effective in children's language and cognitive development, and these books should be prepared in accordance with children's different developmental periods and characteristics. These characteristics are discussed under two main headings: content and format. The content characteristics that should be included in children's books are: theme, topic, basic concepts and values, characters and heroes, plan, language and expression, and message. The format characteristics of children's books are expressed as the size of the book, the binding, paper, cover, letters, page layout and illustrations. It can be said that text selection is important for achieving the learning outcomes in the Turkish Course Curriculum. For this reason, it is important that the characteristics that should be included in high quality children's books are also included in the texts of textbooks. The aim of this study is to examine the texts in the Second Grade Primary School Turkish textbook according to children's literature criteria. The document analysis technique, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in this study. The study group of the research consists of 40 texts included in the Turkish textbook, which was accepted by the Board of Education of the Ministry of National Education for use in the 2022-2023 academic year for second grade primary school students. Since all texts in the second grade Turkish textbook were included in the study, sampling was not used. By reviewing the literature related to children's literature, a checklist was created as appropriate, partially appropriate, and inappropriate in terms of the content and format characteristics of children's literature. In this study, each text was examined on the basis of these checklists within the scope of children's literature criteria. As a result of the findings obtained in the study, it was determined that works from Turkish children's literature are mostly included in the Second Grade Primary School Turkish textbook, biographies of writers and poets are not included, integrity of the meaning is partially compromised in five of the 25 texts that are abridged, and integrity of the meaning is partially compromised in two of the 14 texts for which a short summary is given at the beginning of the text. As a result of the examination of the Second Grade Primary School Turkish textbook in terms of the text types in the 2019 Turkish Course Curriculum, it was found that the textbook includes a total of 40 texts, of which 15 are narrative, 13 are informative and 12 are poetry texts, and that narrative, informative and poetic texts are found in each theme in the textbook. Following the examination of the texts in the Second Grade Primary School Turkish textbook in terms of content characteristics, namely the theme, topic, basic concepts and values, heroes and characters, plan, language and expression, and message, it was observed that 39 texts are appropriate for the compulsory and optional themes in the 2019 Turkish Course Curriculum, 37 texts are appropriate for the topic suggestions in the 2019 Turkish Course Curriculum, 39 texts include basic concepts and values, 32 texts include heroes and characters, 23 texts are appropriate in terms of the plan, 33 texts are appropriate in terms of language and expression, 37 texts are appropriate in terms of the message, and three texts do not include a message. As a result of the examination of the Second Grade Primary School Turkish textbook in terms of format characteristics, namely the size of the book, binding, paper, cover, letters, page layout and illustrations, it was observed that the book is appropriate in terms of the size, paper quality and cover, while it is partially appropriate in terms of binding and letters. Regarding the criteria of children's literature, it was concluded that 31 texts are appropriate and nine texts are partially appropriate in terms of page layout, while 32 texts are appropriate and seven texts are partially appropriate in terms of illustrations, and no illustrations are included in one text. It was observed that the illustrations are used to explain the text and that the illustrations consist of drawings in all of the texts included in the Turkish textbook. Keywords: Turkish textbook, texts, children's literature, content characteristics, format characteristics