Abstract:

The aim of this study is to examine views of preschool teachers on values education. Face to face interviews were conducted to get preschool teacher’s views on values education during 2021-2022 Academic year. Teachers were asked for their opinions about the difficulties they encountered in the field of values education, the types of activities they used for values education, and the most difficult and easiest value rankings, why they need a preschool education program in the field of values education. Moreover, they are asked to list 10 values that need to be included in the MoNE's list of values. According to the findings of this study, it was determined that teachers need a values education program “to prevent moral corruption.” The top 10 values that teachers want to be included in MoNE's preschool education program are as follows: Love, respect, honesty, patriotism, responsibility, justice, sharing, empathy, self-esteem and cooperation. It was found that preschool teachers mostly prefer drama, Turkish language and art activities for values education. Preschool teachers stated that the first 3 values that can be easily gained by children are “love, sharing, responsibility” values while the most difficult 3 values are “empathy, justice and cooperation.” The difficulties faced by preschool teachers in the field of values education were determined as follows: the absence of a values education program, difficulties in explaining children some values due to the fact that they are too abstract for children to comprehend, lack of related resources and inadequate parent-teacher cooperation in this regard.

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