The relationship between school adjustment of preschool children and parenting style attitude

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between preschool children's school adjustment and their parents' parental attitudes. Mixed-methods sequential explanatory design is employed in this study. The population of this study is children enrolled public preschools located in Eskişehir city center in 2014-2015 academic year, their parents and teachers. The sample of the study is determined by the systematic sampling which is a probability-based sampling method. The first and quantitative part of the research was conducted in a sample of 380 preschool children, their parents and teachers. In the second and the qualitative part 9 children having adjustment problem, 9 parents and 9 preschool teacher were designated as participants. "Teacher's School Adjustment Evaluation Scale", "Parental Attitude Scale", "Semi-structured Interview Form for Teachers" "Semi-structured Interview Form for Parents" were used as data gathering tools. At first, Teacher's School Adjustment Evaluation Scale were given teachers for each of the child and Parental Attitude Scale were given to parents. After getting responses 9 children having the lowest scores according to Teacher's School Adjustment Evaluation Scale were determined and semi￾structured interviews were done with parents and teachers of these children. In the quantitative part of the study independent samples t tests were used to test the difference between mothers' employment status (employed or unemployed) and parental attitudes, children's gender and parental attitudes. Also t tests were used to test the difference between mothers' employment status and children's school adjustment, children's gender and their school adjustment. vii Mann-Whitney U Test was used to test the difference between the school adjustment of children living with their parents and school adjustment of children not living with their parents. Descriptive data analysis was used for qualitative data analysis. The results of the study revealed that parents participated in the study have high means on democratic parental attitude scores and overprotective attitude scores while they have low means on authoritarian and permissive parental attitudes scores. And also the results shows that 24 (6,31%) children participating the study have problems about school adjustment while 356 (93,69) do not. When the difference between mothers' employment status and parental attitudes is examined there is a statistically meaningful difference between mothers' employment status and overprotective parental attitudes. The results show that unemployment mothers demonstrate more overprotective parental attitudes than employed mothers. When the difference between mothers' employment status and children's school adjustment is examined there is not a statistically meaningful difference between two variables. Also there is not a statistically meaningful difference between children's gender and parental attitudes. Whereas the difference between school adjustment of children living with their parents and children not living with their parents is not statistically meaningful the significance level of the test and mean rank shows that children living with their parents are more adjusted to school than children not living with their parents. According to the results of interviews with teachers it is seen that teachers usually define school adjustment as the characteristics of children adjusted to school. Also, teachers mentioned about they take some action in order to facilitate children's school adjustment but they face with some problems with parents. Teachers told that in order to facilitate the children's school adjustment they plan simple activities, talk with children and do school adjustment activities. In addition to this a group of teacher interviewed expressed that they have some children in their classroom that do not love school and do not want to come to school and also they face with problems such as family related problems, over attachment to mother and absenteeism. Teachers stated that although there is not any children complaining about school during the conversations with children about school life and home life children ask questions like "how many hours left to go home?" , quit the activities or leave the classroom. All of the teachers expressed that children do not have problems with school or staff but some children have problems with their friends. viii Teachers mentioned that they frequently meet and communicate with parents during the time they bring their children to school, less frequently during the parents' meeting, but they meet every day. According to the results of interviews with parents they expressed that parents are responsible for take children to school and home in time. In addition to this some parents mentioned that their children do not want to go to school as they wholly absorbed in play at home, have sleeping problems, and allege excuse. The parents stated that their children did not change their school during the year. Also they mentioned that they try to talk with their children about their day in school but their children do not want to talk. All the parents indicated that their children love his/her school, teacher and friends, they do not have any problems related to school and staff. However a small group of parents mentioned that their children have problems with their friends. Some of the parents said that they meet teacher every day, while some mentioned that they met teacher at parents' meeting or if they have something to do or something related to children. All of the parents are pleased with the communication between them and the teachers. Necessary suggestions for the parents, educators, researchers and politicians were made in accordance with the results of the study. Keywords: Preschol education, Early childhood education, Parental attitudes, School adjustment, Mixed method.