Journal of Mother Tongue Education

Abstract

Both oral and written
literature products are used in nearly all developmental stages of children.
Children get access children’s literature works through their listening skills
during pre-school period, through their listening and reading skills during
schooling period. Children’s literature has an important place in value
transfer as well as in the process of encouraging the children to gain the
habit of reading, in teaching the mother tongue and raising literature readers.
Therefore, it is necessary to be aware of the values presented in children’s
literature works and to examine the quality of these values. Values contain
both universal and national aspects. As a matter of fact; each country has its
own national values and, in order to protect them, shapes its national
educational purposes according to those national values. When a child accesses
children’s literature works through her/his listening or reading skill; it
becomes more and more definite for her/him to acquire target values, thus, to
learn and educate her/himself and to determine the values that s/he will have
for life. In this study; contributions of the translated novels prepared for 6-10-year-old
children to their values education were determined. The research subject of the
study is a collection of stories from 17 countries, one from each country,
intended for 6-10-year-old children. In order to determine these stories, the
translated children’s literature products found in the “Eğitim Sen Elementary
School Children’s Literature Book Catalogue” were listed according to their
country of origin. This list was used to create a form and obtain field expert
opinions. Schwartz Values ​​List was used to collect the data. The rating was
made as percentage distribution. In the analysis of the data; categorical
content analysis, a content analysis technique, was used. A total of 869 values
were determined in the works examined. 108 of these values were related to
power, 55 of them to achievement, 66 of them to hedonism, 55 of them to
stimulation, 211 of them to self-direction, 45 of them to universalism, 102 of
them to benevolence, 50 of them to traditionalism, 83 of them to conformity and
94 of them to security.