CHILDREN’S LITERATURE AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION: TURKISH CHILDREN’S NOVELS INTRODUCING THE OCCUPATIONS

Abstract

Knowing about occupations is essential in secondary school students’ career development. Children’s literature has a potential to be a resource for secondary school students to learn about the occupations. Based on this potential, which occupations are given in detail about Turkish children’s novels, in other words which occupations are introduced in Turkish children’s novels are examined in this study. It is designed as a holistic single-case study. Accordingly, ninety Turkish children’s novels are identified as the object of this study by using criterion sampling. Then, document review is conducted on the object using occupational investigation and occupational classification criteria as data collection tools. The resulting data is examined with deductive and inductive content analysis. Findings show that many different occupations from various occupational fields are introduced in Turkish children’s novels. Despite the fact that almost all of the novels examined introduce an occupation, a small number of occupations are introduced on average. Additionally, more emphasis is placed on a small occupational group. Turkish children’s novels are adequate to introduce the occupations that secondary school students wish to have in the future. However, theyare inadequate in offering occupations that will enrich their occupational world. Similarly, they are inadequate in introducing STEM occupations which include important occupations of today and the future. There is a direct proportionaland inversely proportional relationship between the skill level and how much an occupation is introduced, and also between the prestige level of the occupationsand how much an occupation is introduced. As a result, Turkish children’s novels function as a vocational guidance and a source of occupational information. However, this function is very limited due to abovementioned reasons. Keywords: Children’s literature, Turkish children’s novels, occupations, occupational information source, vocational guidance

Keywords

• Children’s literature,Turkish children’s novels,occupational information source,occupations,vocational guidance

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