Examination of fantastic works in Turkish children's and youth literature in terms of values education

In this study, it is aimed to determine to what extent values are included in fantastic works, where the interest of children and young readers is increasing day by day, and how these works can be benefited in the values education process. The scope of this study, which is based on document analysis from qualitative research methods, consists of fantastic works published in Turkish children's and youth literature. The fact that the study population was quite large made it necessary to determine the study group. In this context, criterion sampling, one of the purposive sampling types, was preferred. In this direction, as a result of general and specific criteria, fantastic children's and youth stories and novels awarded by 6 institutions/organizations between 2000-2020 were determined, and a total of 22 (16 novels, 6 stories) works, 6 of which were youth and 16 children's books, constituted the study group of the research. Descriptive analysis method was used to analyze the research data. In this context, fantastic works were examined one by one and analyzed in terms of root value distribution. The determination and distribution of the root values in the research were made according to the root values in the 2019 Turkish Course Curriculum. Root values forming the themes of the research; justice, friendship, honesty, self-control, patience, respect, love, responsibility, patriotism and benevolence. The sentences with value expressions in these works were included in the relevant value category using the tagging method and the frequencies of each value were calculated. In addition, the relevant value category is exemplified by directly quoting the value expressions determined in the works. According to the results obtained, it has been determined that the most common values in the fantastic children and youth works examined are benevolence and love, and the least frequent values are justice and responsibility. It has been determined that there are great differences between the fantastic children's and youth works in terms of benevolence, self-control and love values, and it has been concluded that there are close differences in terms of other values. It was investigated that the values of patience and respect were given more place in fantastic youth works, while more importance were given to the values of benevolence and love in the fantastic children's works.