An Action Research to Cope with the Negative Attitudes of Kindergarteners Toward School

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to find out the ways to cope with kindergarteners’ negative attitudes in cooperation with preschool teachers. This qualitative study is based on an action research, the data of which is derived from kindergarteners’ perceptions of “school” (Secer & Celikoz, 2017), researcher’s own observation of kindergarteners, and constant interviews with preschool teachers and their parents to determine and to improve kindergarteners’ negative attitudes toward school. The semi structured interviews are carried out with the kindergarteners’ teachers and parents to determine the ways to cope with the negative attitudes. The results of three-phase action research indicate that of five kindergarteners who regard “school” negatively, and have disorientation problem (Secer & Celikoz, 2017), the negative attitudes of two are handled in the first stage, the negative attitude of two are dealt with in the second stage but the last kindergartener’s negative attitude is not figured out but remains still within the scope of the study.

Keywords: Action research, Attitude, Students’ attitudes toward school