Investigation of primary school 4th grade students' perceptions about school (Rize province case)

As children's ideas about their education, lives and experiences, cognitive and affective impressions affect their attitudes and thoughts about their whole lives, it has become important to examine them (Aksoy & Baran, 2010; Ozdemir, 2008). Similarly, children's perceptions about school institutions are critical as a factor that directs their attitudes and thoughts. For this reason, it is thought that this study is important for examining how students perceive school and their feelings about school while they are in primary school and to develop positive perceptions about school. The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptions of primary school 4th grade students towards school in terms of different variables. The study group consisted of 803 students studying in eight primary schools in Rize province and districts. In the study, comparative research method which is one of the quantitative research approaches was used. In order to collect data, "School Perception Scale geliştiril developed by Calık (2008) was used. In the 2018-2019 academic year, the questionnaires were administered by the researcher in April and May for 7 weeks. The data obtained were analyzed in SPSS program. The t test was used to reveal school perceptions according to variables such as gender, class size, mother's survival, father's survival, school exchange, school arrival, teacher exchange. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to reveal school perceptions according to the number of siblings, mother profession and father profession. At the end of this study, the most important findings; The students' perception of physical conditions, thoughts about teachers and thoughts about democracy and rules in the sub-dimension of the students who have been studying with the same teacher for 4 years were higher than the students who made teacher changes at least once. The scores of the students who have been studying in the same school for 4 years were higher than the students who had at least one school change in terms of thoughts about teachers, thoughts about democracy and rules in school and thoughts about lessons. The most important results of the research; Teacher and school change affect school perception. According to the results of the research, the most important suggestions are; Parents should operate a process in which they take this into account, since students' perceptions of school attendance during the primary school have a positive effect on school perceptions.