The perceptions of Turkish language teachers regarding Turkish lesson language activities

The aim of this study is to determine the perceptions of teachers of Turkish about the activities in Turkish lessons. The population consists of teachers of Turkish working in Gaziantep province and the sampling consists of 186 of them who are currently working in Şahinbey and Şehitkamil districts. Their perceptions concerning the activities in Turkish lessons were measured by the perception scale developed by the researcher. During scale development, a literature review was carried out and a focus group interview was performed to form an item pool. Later, an explanatory factor analysis was carried out and seven sub-categories emerged. In the next step, structure validity of the scale was tested through a confirmatory factor analysis. The computations revealed a good fit for the model; thus, a valid and a reliable scale was obtained. By using the scale, data were collected from 186 teachers and were analyzed through ANOVA and t-test. The perceptions of the participants about the activities were determined by total perception scores, and relations between perception scores and variables concerning gender, age, occupational seniority, school of graduation, education levels and student populations were calculated. A significant relationship was determined between the participants' perceptions about class activities and their ages, and the school of graduation. However, no significant relationship could be found between their perceptions and their gender, education level, occupational seniority and student population. The analyses and discussions concerning the study yielded results suggesting formation and in-service training to raise awareness and perception levels of teachers of Turkish about classroom activities. In addition, suggestions were made to related researchers.