An Evaluation of the Difficulties Classroom Teachers Experience While Giving Primary Reading and Writing Education Within the 4+4+4 Education System

Abstract

The aim of this study is to ascertain the problems classroom teachers face while teaching the first reading and writing classes to first-grade pupils following the changes made in the current educational act towards 4+4+4 education system and to put forward the views of teachers concerning these problems. This research makes use of the "phenomenological" approach, one of the qualitative research methods. Determined by "criterion sampling," which is one of the purposive sampling methods, 29 classroom teachers constitute the study group of the research. The research data were collected by semi-structured interviews approach in 2013-2014 academic years, the semester of 2015-2016 academic year unstructured observations and students for reading and writing documents while the analysis of the data was made with descriptive analysis and content analysis. In accordance with the regulations in the curriculum, each question was designed to determine the problems class teachers experience while teaching first reading and writing primers and the results were evaluated and interpreted under separate categories such as drawbacks rooted in students, families/parents, teachers, school and the curriculum. According to the survey, some of the problems experienced by first-grade teachers while teaching reading and writing within the 4 + 4 + 4 Education System can be listed as follows: Student-oriented problems such as perception and compliance issues, inadequate physical development, getting bored quickly, discipline issues, low reading speed, lack of self-care skills, and the presence of different age groups in the same classroom; Curriculum-oriented problems such as the long adaptation durations, inappropriate nature of the curriculum for the development of students between 5 and 5,5 years of age, inapt textbooks, the underprepared teachers who were informed about the system at short notice, the fact that the system was imposed without taking expert opinions, disadvantages of audio-based teaching, and problems arising from italic inscription; School-oriented problems such as the lack of educational materials, playgrounds, etc., inapt structure of the desks, boards, toilets, and sinks for younger students (due to teaching primary and secondary school students in the same building), overcrowded classrooms, lack of classrooms, and the injustices in administrative issues and student distributions; Teacher-oriented problems such as the inability of teachers to adapt to the new system, the tendency to follow the previous curriculum, the lack of an understanding of class distributions in the same school, the differences between the levels of perception among students, the needless haste in teaching reading and writing, and the inability of teachers to use italic inscriptions. At the end of the research, several suggestions have been provided related to these issues.