Sevda Bekman

Long-term effects of early intervention: Turkish low-income mothers and children

Abstract The two studies reported in this paper comprise the Turkish Early Enrichment Project (TEEP) spanning a period of 10 years. Both studies were conducted with mothers and children in low-income, low-education areas of Istanbul. Study 1 involved an examination over 4 years of the effects of two different types of early enrichment (intervention), child-focused (center-based) and mother-focused (home-based). Study 2 was a follow-up of Study 1, 7 years after the end of project intervention. Although both interventions produced superior cognitive skills and school adjustment at the end of the program, follow-up assessments in Study 2 revealed that parent-focused intervention had numerous sustained effects in terms of school attainment, higher primary school grades and vocabulary scores, more favorable attitudes towards school, and better family and social adjustment, while most effects of center-based intervention had dissipated (with the notable exception of negative effects of custodial, as opposed to educational, day care). It is concluded that home-based early enrichment through the mediation of the mother is a highly effective strategy with multiple positive outcomes in contexts of socioeconomic disadvantage.

Alternative to the Available: Home Based vs. Centre Based Programs.

During the recent years there is an increasing agreement about the advantages of attention to early child care and education and important initiatives have already been taken by several countries. The research project which I will summarize here can be considered as an attempt to increase, demonstrate the importance of early child care and education in Turkey. It illustrates the positive effects of the existing early childhood education services in the country, and also demonstrates an alternative model which can be effective in extending them. A home‐intervention programme is described, and research is presented concerning its effects on childrens intellectual and social development.

Effectiveness of an intervention program for six-year-olds: a summer-school model

This study reports on the evaluation of a ‘summer pre-school model’ as an intervention measure. A 10-week program was designed to increase the school readiness of Turkish children from disadvantaged and multilingual environments by supporting their cognitive and linguistic skills during the summer prior to the start of school. The intervention consisted of a Pre-school Education Program with a special focus on Turkish language, pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills. The evaluation study was carried out on its first implementation in a southeastern province of Turkey where it was attended by bilingual six-year-olds. A pre-post, control-group, quasi experimental design was used with 92 intervention trained and 93 non-trained control children from the same neighborhoods. Compared to the control children the intervention children scored significantly higher on post-test measures of pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills, and on measures of syntactic knowledge and story comprehension. The results also revealed the importance of the educational level of the mother for progress in language skills. The findings indicate the overall short-term effectiveness of the program and of the summer pre-school model as a primary prevention strategy that aims to bring children at risk to a higher level of school readiness.

Does daycare centre experience and it's aim matter?

SUMMARY The paper evaluates the existing centre based early childhood education system in Turkey within the context of a 4 year longitudinal research project, ‘Comprehensive Early Enrichment Project’ (Kagitçibasi, Sunar & Bekman, 1988; Bekman, 1990, 1993, 1996, in press). The project had 2 aims; a) to develop a home intervention model, b) to assess the impact of three different educational contexts; educational, custodial and home care, on childrens behaviour. In the project, 6-day care centres, 255 children and 12 teachers were incorporated. Since the basic aim of the project was to study the overall development of the child, various different measures such as observations, tests and interviews were used as means of assessment. Information about the children was collected when the children were 3 & 5 and 6 & 8 years of age respectively. The first year measurements provided in-depth information about the two main environments of the childs home and school, and formed the base line. The data collected in the fourth year of the project made possible the examination of the short-term impact of the different contexts of development on children. The assessments were made again 6 years after the programme project was over when the children were 11 and 15 years of age. Due to attrition in the follow up research, 217 were reached from the original number of 255. Results supported the expectation that the type of service provided in the early years has important effects on the overall development of children.

Microgenesis of narrative competence during preschool interactions: Effects of the relational context

Çi gdem Ka gıtçıbaşı was an influential socializing agent leading to my entry into psychology as my chosen field. As she is a long-term family friend, the topic of her emergence as a foremost social scientist in the world often blossomed in our dinnertime talk. When I wanted to switch from another field to psychology, her encouraging words exhilarated me and comforted my family. In fact, she was the one to call and inform me that my transfer to psychology has been approved. I remember that bath-robed moment of my life vividly, where my mother rushed me out from a shower to accept that personally momentous call from Çi gdem. Over the following years, I learned a lot from her both as a student and a colleague. I am honored to have the opportunity to deliver the following piece of work, which owes much to her guidance and encouragement, in celebration of her theoretical and applied contributions to socialization of children into competent beings. Self-stories derived from autobiographical memory and how children develop these cognitive/linguistic structures have been a focus of intensive interest in the last two decades. The work on children’s narrative competence stems from at least three lines of concern: (1)Narratives as indicators of self-development. In this view, narratives are seen as the primordial discourse structures in which humans organize self-related experience (Engel 1995; Ochs 1996). As Georgakopoulou (2002) suggests, “Narrative is widely held as a fundamental mode of discourse, unquestionably primary in everyday social lives, and central to the organization and sense making of personal and socio-cultural experience.” (2) Narratives as indicators of cognitive-conceptual development. According to this line of research, the ability to represent an experience in narrative form is critical to organizing and retelling the experience in autobiographical memory (Nelson 1996; Nelson and Fivush 2004). (3) Narratives as indicators of linguistic development. This approach proposes that narratives reveal children’s levels of language

Mothers Speaking: A Study on the Experience of Mothers within the Mother-Child Education Programme (MOCEP).

SUMMARY This study aimed to investigate the experiences of mothers participating in MOCEP in Istanbul, through a qualitative research methodology. Overall effectiveness of the programme, its implementation and how the mothers benefited were the main concerns. The study was carried out with 20 mothers. Individual and focus interviews, participant observation and diary keeping were used. The results revealed that the programme created some changes in mother-child relationship, in mothers, children and fathers. The effects of the programme were categorised as direct and side effects, and the direction of the effect was indicated as positive or negative. The effects of the programme on mothers were examined in two aspects: the change in the mothers behaviour and perceptions. This change in the mother was found to have three addressees: the children, the husbands and the mother herself. In addition, a causal network was used to display the relationship between the programme, the mother, the child and the father.