Personal and social values in primary grade children’s books

Abstract

One requirement of realizing the aims of Turkish National Education is educating individuals that adopt the values of Turkish Nation. Families, educational institutions, and teaching materials have important roles to raise individuals who adopt social values and put them into practice. One of the important materials is written children books. In this context, the aim of the study is to determine the personal and social values dealt with in primary grade children's books. One of the qualitative methods, document analysis method was used in the study. Universe of the study was consisted of written children’s books of elementary grades. Sample was consisted of children books that are sold in the city center of Kırşehir. The sample a total of 210 children from domestic and foreign authors who were selected by random sampling among the children’s books belonging to different publishing house offered for sale in book stories in the city center of Kırşehir were created from the book. To collect data, “Values Control List” was developed and used by the researcher. Study findings showed that the children’s books commonly include individual values are “responsibility, love, goodness, diligence, animal love and trust” and social values are “friendship, helpfulness and unity of family”. The least mentioned individual values are “cleanliness, being patient, frugality, loyalty, being tactful and morality” and social values are “patriotism, peace, empathy, love of nature and freedom”. © 2019, Ozgen Korkmaz. All rights reserved.