Abstract:

This research was evaluated conversation and story reading and telling activities used by pre-school education teachers and determined the results related to these activities. A hundred pre-school education teachers, working in private and public primary schools and kindergartens in seven municipalities in Istanbul, participated in this study. A questionnaire composed of some demographic information, items related the research topic, and an observation form prepared for the conversation and story telling activities were used to collect the data. The questionnaire form was filled out by the teachers but the observation forms were rated by the researchers, observing the teachers during the conversation and story telling activities. The teaching methods implemented during the story and conversation activities by the teachers were compared according to school types. Demographic information of the teachers was analyzed with frequencies and percentages. The opinions of the teachers working in the private and public kindergartens were compared and contrasted with chi-square. Also correlation values between the information gathered from teachers and the observation results of the researchers were computed. The results revealed that the discussion during conversation, traveling and observation-experiment methods, problem solving, and sample case methods during story telling changed according to school type. Also it was determined that role playing technique during conversation activities and the question-answer technique during story activities were implemented by the teachers according to both the researchers' observation and the teachers own reports. There is no relation between the teachers' expressions and the observers' opinions regarding the other techniques.

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