Demokratic education and leadership in village institutes: A qualitative research

The ultimate objective of this study is to put forth the effect of village institute education on the acquisition of consciousness in terms of democracy and leadership features in order to make contributions to the recent educational practices.The study is a qualitative research based on written resources and the opinions of those graduated from high village institutes and village institutes. Document analysis and interview techniques are employed in order to collect the data.The participants of this study, who reside in Ankara, Antalya and Fethiye, a district of Muğla, consist of two high village institute and ten village institute graduates, two of whom are married. The participants are selected through maximum variety sampling in order to have the oppurtunity to gather information from those who served in different vocational fields. An interview form composed of open ended questions was employed during the interviews.The data obtained from document analysis and the interviews were analyzed through descriptive and content analysis methods. The information gathered from the document analysis, which enabled to form the conceptual frame of the study, was analysed through descriptive analysis, whereas that gathered from the face to face interviews with the particioants was analysed through descriptive and content analysis methods respectively.The results show that village institutes, seeing democratic practices as the core means of gaining democratic consciousness and leadership features, appropriated a democratic way of living and this approach had a possitive effect on bringing up village leaders.Key words: Village institutes, democracy, leadership.