Ethnographic outlook to school, class and peer culture in pre-school

This is a qualitative study that aims to describe the school culture, classroom culture and peer culture within a pre-school and to investigate how these different cultures interact and communicate with each others. This research has been carried out with a group of people including 20 children, the classroom teacher, trainees and school staff (administrative staff and staff responsible for cleaning and food) in an independent kindergarten that is affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the province of Kahramanmaraş. In this research, cultures have been observed by utilizing ethnographic approach. During this process, the researcher collected the data as a participant-observer by using observations, interviews, document analysis and researcher?s log.Descriptive and qualitative content analysis were used to analyze the data. While in descriptive analysis the data were presented as holistic manner, in the content analysis the raw data were subjected to the systematic encoding process.Based on the findings of the study, the culture of the school was formed by school?s physical and social features and consisted of covert and various cultures. While the classroom culture took the shape of the physical characteristics of the classroom, the teacher and the teacher?s practices in the classroom were essential factors that shaped the classroom culture. As for the peer culture, the relations of the children with each other were at the core part of culture and the games like Spiderman, Ben Ten and war games, especially preferred by boys, formed the nature of this culture. About the interaction of these three cultures with each other, it has been concluded that the school culture shaped the classroom culture, that the classroom culture determine the nature of the peer culture and that there is a clash between the classroom culture and peer cultureKeywords: Pre-school, School culture, classroom culture, peer culture