Abstract:

The main purpose of this research is to determine the views of prospective classroom teachers who take traditional children's games seriously. For this purpose, the phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research designs has been utilized in the study. The participants of the research consisted of 10 primary school teacher candidates who took the elective traditional children's games course at a university in Istanbul and were determined by the criterion sampling method. The data were collected through a semi-structured interview form prepared by the researchers and analyzed by content analysis. When the findings were examined, the prospective classroom teachers stated that traditional children's games contributed to value education, skill development, educational function, and intangible cultural heritage. In this direction, the research data were presented through themes in the form of the values that traditional children's games contain, the skills that traditional children's games gain, the educational function of traditional children's games, and the contribution of traditional children's games help to grow, intangible cultural heritage. The themes obtained were supported by one-to-one quotations from the statements of the pre-service teachers in the findings section. Considering the findings of the study, it can be said that it is important to use traditional children's games in educational environments.

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