Abstract:

The aim of this research is to examine the perspectives of parents and teachers regarding the role of media in the gender perceptions of preschool children. For this reason, the research is planned as a phenomenological approach, one of the qualitative research methods to find out the perspectives of the participants regarding the role of the media on children’s gender perceptions, to reveal and analyze their experiences. The research study group consist of 32 parents and 2 teachers from each of the two pre-primary education institutions selected by purposeful criterion sampling method, 8 parents for each kindergarten and 1 teacher for their children. Semi- structured interview method is used for these interviews. In the semi-structured interview forms, questions were asked to parents and teachers to determine what their observations were, regarding the media role on children regarding gender perceptions, how they interpret and how they guide children's discourse and behavior. Content analysis was made to investigate the subject in depth by creating a suitable theme and code from these data. One of the important results of this study is that the existence of patriarchy has been determined in the parents' responses to the children's behaviors pointing to the role of the media towards gender. On the other hand, it has been determined that teachers are trying to create an egalitarian way of thinking for their students based on gender equality.

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