Abstract:

The purpose of this research is to develop leadership skills of preschool children. In accordance with this purpose, “Leaders of the Future” training program was designed by the researchers. With this program, it was aimed to develop preschool children’s skills of basic leadership concepts, recognizing themselves and others, working with groups and collaboration, communication, and problem solving. In this research a pretest post test control group design was utilised. The study group of the research consisted of 24 preschool children whose ages differed between 48 months and 66 months. The research data was gathered by the researchers, preschool teachers and a field specialist independtandtly via an observation form which was spesifically develop for this purpose by the researchers. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics, Mann Whitney U and Wilcoxon Paired Two Sample tests were used. The most significant result of the research is that “leadership of the future training program” is effective at increasing preschool children’s leadership skills. Moreover, that gender of children does not affect their leadership skills in a statistically significant way is another result of this research.

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