Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language to Young Learners: Epistemological Beliefs of Pre-service Teachers

Abstract

Teaching Turkish as a foreign language gained momentum in the last decades of the 20th century. However, teaching Turkish as a foreign language to young learners is still in its infancy as a field of study. Therefore, investigating practitioners’ epistemological beliefs on the issue will contribute to fill the gap in the literature. Regarding this fact, the present study intended to scrutinize epistemological beliefs of pre-service Turkish language teachers on teaching Turkish as a foreign language to young learners. Adopting a hermeneutic phenomenological research design, which is a qualitative study in nature, the present study gathered data from 66 pre-service Turkish language teachers enrolled in a state university in Turkey through written interview forms. The content analysis of the gathered qualitative data revealed that although all the participants took a course on teaching Turkish as a foreign language, almost none of them felt satisfaction in terms of their accomplishments in teaching Turkish as a foreign language to young learners. The findings also revealed that the participants had varying reasons for their dissatisfaction, including theory and adult-oriented course contents and lack of practice in the field. As for suggestions for additional policies on teaching Turkish as a foreign language to young learners, the participants recommended launching field-specific courses for pre-service teachers.