A review of thesis in the field of children's literature in Turkey

The aim of this study is to examine the graduate theses on children's literature over certain criteria. For this purpose, theses prepared between the years 1987-2020 in Turkey were reached with the "children's literature" keyword. The graduate theses registered in the National Thesis Center of the Turkish Council of Higher Education Institution were examined in terms of their education levels, subjects, methods, data collection tools, results, and suggestions. The researcher also examined the theses on the primary school level in terms of their subject, method, data collection tool, results, and suggestion criteria. In this study carried out in a descriptive model within the qualitative research, first of all, the documents were accessed, then the originality of the documents was checked, the documents were analyzed based on the determined criteria, and finally, the obtained data were used. 283 graduate theses published between 1989 and 2020 were analyzed. It was observed that the number of studies has increased significantly after 2009 and more studies have been conducted at pre-school and secondary school levels. Also, it was seen that these studies are generally about authors and book reviews. At the primary school level, the focus was mainly on reading attitude and book review, and there were more studies with qualitative research designs and document analysis methods. It was concluded that the results and suggestions were written around keywords such as teaching values, subtextual elements, story elements. Considering the results, it can be said that studies on children's literature targeting primary school children and case studies should be increased.