Classroom teachers' thoughts on language skills and pre-school education of primary school first grade students

The aim of this research is to find out the thoughts of teachers, who are or were classroom teachers at a first grade of a primary school, on language skills and pre-school education of the students. The research shows a descriptive survey model qualification. In the research, the data has been obtained by preparing a survey containin 44 items. The universe of the research consists of classroom teachers who taught at the primary schools in Cizre County of Şırnak and Siirt city center during 2017-2018 academic year. The sample of the research consists of 233 classroom teachers in total, 117 of whom were chosen by random sampling in Cizre County, and 116 of whom were chosen, again, by random sampling in Siirt city center. For data analysis, the data obtained from the teachers' responses to the prepared survey was entered to SPSS 20.0 statistical program suite through 1-5 rating scale. First, frequency, percentages, mean and standard deviation were calculated for each item. The survey was analysed from three aspects as; 1- General thoughts of classroom teachers on pre-school education, 2- Thoughts of classroom teachers on contribution of pre-school education to language skills, 3- Thoughts of classroom teachers about the role of family on pre-school education. The researcher himself chose to analyse from three aspects. To find out if independent variables affect the teachers' thoughts or not, t-test was applied to the variables that have two variables (work place and sex), and one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was calculated for variables that have more than two variables (seniority, graduation status, employment and the number of teaching first grades). When differences occurred, LSD test was used as post-test. Besides, for each group mean and standard deviation values were calculated. According to the results of the research, 59,2% of the teachers who took part in the research reported that the pre-school education should be compulsory, 50,2% stated that the students who have pre-school education can express themselves more easily than those who haven't, 79,0% stated that they think family education is very important for the child to develop healthily. The teachers stated that pre-school education has a structure that promotes children's development areas, and its aim of "creating a common education environment for those come from unfavourable environments and families" comes true. Additionally, the teachers stated that when compared with the ones who haven't, the students who had pre-school education are more successful in language skills. In their views, the classroom teachers stated that the families don't have information about pre-school education, family education is very important for the child's healthy development but pre-school education institutes don't pay enough attention to the family education.