Abstract:

The study analyzes the effects of the Family Education Program, applied to mothers, on the knowledge levels of mothers and development of children, who have an infant at 37 to 66 months in the pre-school education. Children and mothers attending to six independent preschools that are affiliated to the Directorate of National Education that are located in the city center of Çankırı province were included in the research. Three preschools out of six were designated as experimental groups and the remaining three were designated as control groups, by using the simple random sampling method. Twenty-seven mothers from the preschools in the experimental group were identified to take part in the education on a voluntary basis. Accordingly, 27 mothers and their children formed the experimental group, and likewise 27 mothers and their children constituted the control group. Data have been collected from the research through “General Information Form”, “Family Education Need Determination Form”, “Parental Data Evaluation Form” and “Ankara Development Screening Inventory”. According to the Shapiro-Wilk test results (p<0.05), Mann Whitney U test, out of non-parametric tests was used in the analysis of data. At the end of the research, no significant difference was detected between the pretest scores of the knowledge on child development of mothers from both experimental and control groups, while the posttest scores indicated a significant difference in favor of the control group, between the posttest scores (p<0.05). When the developments of children from experimental and control groups were examined, no significant difference was detected between the pre-education scores, whereas a significant difference was detected in the social skill sub-test, in favor of the experimental group, between the post-education scores (p<0.05).