Examining the stereotypes and prejudices of primary school students

It has been aimed to examine the stereotypes and prejudices of primary school students with this study. The research has been realized with the mixed research method in which qualitative and quantitative researches are used together. The main qualitative research design was used in the qualitative dimension of the study. Thereby, the 20 volunteer primary school teacher who work in Mardin and provide diversity in terms of eniority, gender, settlement and place of birth, participated in the study. Qualitative data were collected with the "Semi-Structured Interview Form in Related to Stereotypes and Prejudices of Primary School Students" developed by the researchers and analyzed with content analysis. The quantitative data of the study were obtained with the Stereotypes Scale for children and the Prejudice Scale for children, which were developed by the researchers. By the virtue of these scales, it has been analyzed in which topics the students have stereotypes and prejudices and whether there is a significant difference in stereotype and prejudice levels and stereotypes and prejudices according to gender and age variable. This scales were applied to 448 students who are at 4th grade of primary school in Kızıltepe, Mardin. The data that was obtained with scales were analyzed in One-Way Analysis of Variance and Independent Samples t-Test in SPSS program. Primary school students have stereotypes on issues related to gender, ethnicity/race, language, religion, places, occupations, individuals with special needs, courses, socioeconomic level and individual differences in regard to teacher opinions. It has been stated that the students expose prejudiced attitudes and behaviors such as avoidance, staying away, exclusion, not choosing, disgust and prevention against the groups they have stereotypes. It was determined that stereotype scores were lower and prejudice scores were higher in terms of students' general scores in quantitative findings. There was no significant difference between the stereotype and prejudice levels of the students as regards gender variable. The findings obtained in terms of the age variable show that the older age group may have more stereotypes than prejudices, while the lower age groups may have more prejudices than stereotypes. Stereotypes and prejudices in children are seen from an early age. An education should be given on this subject at an early age to reduce stereotypes and prejudices. For this reason, the ability to recognize stereotypes and prejudices in the Social Sciences Lesson should be gained from the 4th grade, not from the 7th grade.