Social Skills of First Grade Primary School Students and Preschool Education.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the level of social skills of the first-grade primary school students who received preschool education and not. The sample group of the study consists of 521 children studying in the first grade of primary schools in Turkish provinces of Ankara, Kars, Malatya, Igdir, Samsun, Mersin, Gaziantep, Karabük, Ardahan, Erzurum and Artvin. For the purpose of this study, the Personal Inquiry Form and the Social Skills Form (Gülay, 2004) were used to collect data. The findings of this study indicate that the variable of receiving preschool education has an impact on the frequency of using certain social skills (i.e. greeting, introducing oneself mentioning his/her name, introducing others mentioning their name, complimenting, answering questions, preferring to talk rather than resort to physical force in case of anger, participating in a group, making division of labor and cooperation, reconciling, requesting information and sharing) among first-grade primary school students. The first-grade students who received preschool education use these skills more frequently compared to those who did not receive. There is no difference between the two groups for the other 21 skills in the social skills form.