SERBEST ETKİNLİKLER DERSİNDE SINIF ÖĞRETMENLERİN KENDİLERİNİ YETERLİ GÖRME DÜZEYLERİ

Introduction and Aims Students’ positive attitudes towards school are affected by different factors such as syllabuses, teachers’ quality and educational activities. Besides these factors, considering students’ developmental characteristics and interests, lesson times, breaks and extracurricular activities also can affect students’ attitudes towards school. During to developing to primary school curriculum at 2006 Ministry of National Education has also made some changes in lesson times and some lessons with the expectation of affecting students’ attitudes directly towards school. With it in The Ministry of National Education has added Free Activities Lessons (FAL) to the elementary school program in 2010. Study was aimed to determine the competency levels of primary school teachers towards the teaching of free activities course in primary school. In this context, the opinions of primary school teachers were surveyed by The Assessment Scale of Free Activities Lesson (ASFAL). Also, their opinions were interpreted according to independent variables such as gender, seniority, and locations of their schools. A lot of researchers express that many of the free activities affect students positively in terms of cognitive, behavioral and academic. (Gökbulut and Yücel Yumuşak, 2014; Gülsoy and Uçgun, 2013). According to the findings of the research, it is said that with free activities it is possible to create realization of free time and self-awareness, activation of attitudes towards deciding, free time activities and social interaction. Also, free activities increase socializing of the students, make their communication better (Mundy, 1975; Büküşoğlu and Bayturan, 2005), contribute their physical and mental development (Mota and Esculas, 2002) and decrease the risks of chronic diseases (Sellick, 2002), help students to reflect themselves and to find creative solutions for conflicts (Bjamadottir, 2004), increase their freedom, enhance the awareness of using free time effectively, provide benefit in terms of planning and practicing and transferring the things they learn at school to social life and also provide benefit themselves in their adulthood. (Torkildsen, 2005). In addition to these, it is said that free activities bring positive experiences about real life and accordingly free activities help students to create their ideal ego (İnal, 2009). The aims of the free activities according to the primary school program are to make students love school more through didactic and entertaining practices, make them adopt the school as a family and express themselves more comfortably, provide feeling themselves secure and more happy, help socializing through increasing the interactions, contribute their physical, mental, social, cultural, personal and moral development. Thus, free activities lesson aims to students become well-supported individuals. (MEB, 2010)With this research, it is intended to define teachers’ levels of qualifications for themselves who take part in FALs in primary school program, problems and style of the practice. The findings may contribute to the processes of both schools’ program development and teachers’ practicing the existing program. Thus, it may contribute to the field. Method This study is a descriptive research which intends to define the self-proficiency levels of classroom teachers in free activities course located in the primary school program. In this research, the general screening model has been chosen. In a universe consisting of numerous elements, it is intended to look through sampling, the entire universe or a small group from the universe to take the measure of the universe. The target universe of this research consists of classroom teachers all around Turkey and the universe of study consists of 897 regular classroom teachers who work in Şırnak. Availability universe is composed of 225 regular classroom teachers chosen randomly from 897 regular classroom teachers in the universe of study. In Şırnak, there are 897 regular classroom teachers in 2013-2014 educational years. According to Büyüköztürk et al (2012), on the 0,05 statistically significant effect, the 1000 universes corresponding sampling quantity is recommended as 278. In this research, 225 teachers’ opinions have put into perspective from the total referred 283 teachers’ opinions after previews. While 116 (51.6%) of them are women, 109 (48.4%) of them are men. In terms of professional work experience, teachers who have been working for 1-5 years are equal to 83,1%, 6-10 years are equal to 16,0% and 11-15 years are equal to 0,9%. It is clearly seen that incipient teachers are in the majority. When it comes to workplace variables, villages are equal to 60,9%, county seats are equal to 25,8%, town centres are equal to 9,3% and the small towns are equal to 4,0%. During the process of data collection, to evaluate the self-proficiency levels of teachers in free activities course located in the primary school program, the Free Activities Course Assessment Scale (ASFAL) produced by the researcher has been used. During the process of developing the scale, first a sketch form which contains 32 items has been composed by scanning related articles. By given this sketch form and Free Activities Lessons program to six teachers, their considerations about its development and exemplification levels of the form items for the program have been taken. And the new scale form which has been developed according to these suggestions has been evaluated by five experienced primary school teachers in terms of the qualities and scope of the questions and how they exemplify. In this process, coefficient percentage recommended by Miles and Huberman (1994) has been calculated. “Agreement” and “disagreement” numbers have been calculated and prepared to practice. In this research, the scale has consisted of 27 items which have been agreed on over 0.70. For whole scale, Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency has been calculated as 0.71.The research data has been gathered in the second period of 2013-2014 educational years. SPSS 15.0 package program has been used for the analysis of research data. Normal distribution tests have been held before the data series analysed. In this process due to the fact that there have been teachers more than 50, Kolmogrov- Smirnov test has been applied. Mann Whitney U test has been applied for determining the difference in their self-proficiency degrees in Free Activities Course according to gender. To examine the self-proficiency degree of teachers according to their occupational work hours and the neighbourhood where the school stated, Kruskal Wallis H test has been applied. The significance level of gained data has been calculated as 0.05. Findings In the research, in terms of the teachers’ views about the self-proficiency degree of themselves, teachers have indicated themselves as “Often” in 13, “Sometimes” in 12 and “Never” in 2 of scale dimensions. But generally, average opinion is “sometimes” proficient level with 2,423 concerning all items. Though classroom teachers find themselves partially proficient to teach Free Activities lesson, they believe that the Free Activities lesson is very useful to improve the levels of students’ interdisciplinary studies, technology literacy and cooperation and also they specify that the course ripens the students’ individual differences. Teachers have positive beliefs about the Free Activities lesson although they have lack of instruments in their schools and classrooms. Conclusion and Suggestions The teachers, according to the findings of the research, are in the opinion of being sufficient as “sometimes” for two and “frequently” for eight of the ten sub-problems related to their sufficiency. In spite of this, they are in the opinion of experiencing problems in “sometimes” for two and “frequently” for five of the seven sub-problems of facing troubles of FAL’s practicing. They also think that it is given a place of two for “never” and eight for “sometimes” of the ten items which constitute the aspect of which other lesson activities are given a place in FAL’s program. According to this, it can be said that teachers generally feel themselves sufficient in FALs but they frequently face with troubles in these lessons and they don’t give places for other lesson activities in segregated times for them in the weekly schedule. In the research, teachers are in favor of the contribution of the FALs to the students’ development. Among them, professional working experience between one and five years ones define FAL’s contribution as “frequently” and working in districts male ones define its contribution as “always”. Classroom teachers define that contribution as “frequently” in terms of their being informed about the practices of FALs. It is seen that the teachers work in districts can adapt FALs more properly into the weekly schedule and develop positive opinions. They are seen that they develop positive opinions as “frequently” about using the FALs to reflect students’ individual differences and to canalize them cooperation. The teachers, whose professional experiences are six to ten years, feel themselves more sufficient about using the technological materials related with FALs. They are in the opinion of defining “frequently” about the cooperation with the other teachers and the school administration in practicing FALs. The opinions which teachers have towards FALs vary according to sex, professional experience and workplaces. These findings are supported with many other researches. In their research, Gömleksiz and Özdaş (2013) state that FALs enable students’ socializing much more and due to the activities in FALs, students’ level of loyalty to their school increases, their ability to work either individually or cooperatively changes positively and the subjects that have been defined for the FALs are appropriate for the levels of students. Inal (2009) states in his findings that activities like sport, theatre, competition, trip etc. bring positive experiences to students’ real lives and accordingly, these activities are helpful for occurring students’ ideal egos. With the same way, Gökbulut and Yücel Yumuşak (2014) and Gülsoy and Uçgun (2013) state in their researches that game has a remarkable effect on success and permanence. Researches show that by social activities, socializing increases and better communication is possible. Thus, confident individuals grow up in the society. (Büküşoğlu and Bayturan, 2005). In spite of this, Sarı (2014) found in his high-school level research that, the degree of the participation to the free time activities is low. Most of the students expressed that they had never or rarely participated in a free time activity. It wasn’t seen that there was a statistically significant difference between students’ degree of the participation to free time activities and degree of the success. But it was noticed that there was a statistically significant difference among participation to free time activities and school’s socioeconomic status, families’ income level, parents’ education level, sex and attending social clubs. More than half of the students stated that they didn’t see the contribution of the free time activities to their developments. These findings are not supported by most of the other researches in this field. According to the findings of this research, teachers “sometimes” give other lesson’s activities a place in FALs. This shows that teachers practice FALs as independent activities. These findings show differences among many other researches. Bozak et al, (2012) states that FALs aren’t being practiced properly. Gültekin, Atalay and Ay (2014) state in their research that some teachers accept FALs as reinforcements and they have a chance to finish their incomplete topics of other lessons, mostly Turkish and Math lessons in FALs. In same way, Dündar and Karaca (2011) identify in their research that teachers face with the concern of completing topics due to intense syllabus; nearly half of them practice the activities of other lessons, mostly Math and Science. In the research it is seen that teachers work in district find their school sufficient for getting materials that be used in FALs. This finding shows difference among some other researches’ findings which state that teachers have lack of materials, there aren’t appropriate physical conditions to practice, lesson periods are too much, there is an intense syllabus, there is insufficient teaching, teachers have lack of knowledge, FALs don’t have a program, there aren’t course books and there are some problems about planning. (Köse (2004), Gün (2013), Aydın, Bakırcı and Ürey (2012), Gömleksiz and Özdaş (2012), Kazu and Aslan (2013), Dündar and Karaca (2011), Bozak, Apaydın and Demirtaş (2012), Gömleksiz and Özdaş (2013) )Suggestions 1. In order to use program more effectively and solve problems, material and program support has to be provided by local and central corporations for teachers. 2. Teachers have to avoid accepting FALs as reinforcements for other lessons and MEB has to follow this issue seriously. 3. It may help providing feedback that the same studies are being researched by other researchers in bigger sample sets and with different methods.