Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti’nde Okul Öncesi Eğitim Kurumlarının Öğrenme Ortamlarının Uluslararası Standartlar Açısından İncelenmesi

This research aims to measure the appropriateness of the learning environments of preschools in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to international standards. The sample of the study was formed with a total of 19 preschool education institutions selected from the districts of Famagusta and İskele. The Pre-school Education Environment Assessment Scale (ECERS), which was prepared to measure the functional and structural quality of preschool education, was used as a data collection tool in the survey. This scale was developed by Harms and Clifford (1980). ECERS is a measurement tool that examines the pre-school environment, the activities and communication that are applied to the environment for the duration of the training. Due to the fact that ECERS has been adopted to Turkish before, adapted version is used in this study. To identify the internal consistency of the scale, the Cronbach Alpha coefficient has been calculated and it is found as 0.92. The data obtained in the study were analyzed using the Classification Tree, Mann Whitney U Test, Kruskall-Wallis Test and Friedman Test. As a result of the research reveal that preschools in the TRNC are inadequate in terms of the quality levels of the total quality scores of educational environments. This suggests that preschools compliance with international standards is also insufficient. It also came to the conclusion that the total quality score of the preschools on the ECERS scale was related to the teacher's professional experience and class size. Another finding of the research is that there is no significant relationship between the school fees and the educational time and the quality of the institutions. As a result of the analyzes in which the subscale scores were compared without independent variables, some subscales differed significantly from each other and some subscales did not show any significant difference. This shows that there appears to be a need to improve quality in early childhood education centers. In addition, considering the local and global indicators, the quality standards for pre-school education institutions compatible with the cultures of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus should be determined and all official preschool education institutions should provide services within these standards.