The Investigation of the Attitudes of Preservice Teachers Regarding the Rights of the Child

Abstract

The research was designed in the descriptive survey model, which is one of the quantitative research methods, with the aim of revealing the attitudes of preservice teachers regarding the rights of the child. The target population of the research was composed of 1419 students studying in the classroom teaching departments in education faculties of seven universities from seven different geographical regions of Turkey in 2017-2018 academic year, which were selected by random sampling. The research was carried out with 818 students who were selected by multiphase sampling and who volunteered to participate in the study. The scale in the research was named “questionnaire for measuring attitudes towards children’s rights”. The data was collected with this scale. According to the results, it was found that students’ attitudes towards children’s rights who participated in the research were high. While no significant differences were found according to the students’ class levels and taking course regarding child/human rights variables, there were significant differences according to gender and university variables. It was revealed that the attitudes of the female students regarding the rights of the child were higher than those of male students; and the attitudes of the students regarding the rights of the child in Trakya University were higher than those in Adiyaman University. Regarding the results obtained, various suggestions were made such as giving the courses related to the rights of the child within the framework of compulsory courses and increasing the informative education activities for male students regarding the rights of the child.