A grounded theory of school as a social system in an atypical context

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Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Eğitim Bilimleri Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2011

Öğrenci: ZUHAL ZEYBEKOĞLU ÇALIŞKAN

Danışman: YAŞAR KONDAKÇI

Özet:

This is a grounded theory study of school as a social system in an atypical context. It was the aim of this study to develope context-specific theoretical propositions to understand how a school as a social system looks like in an atypical context, which is characterized by ethnic group, migrated groups of low socio-economic status and low-level education. A public school that shows these characteristics was chosen for the study. The school is mostly populated by students coming from Roman community and migrated families from northern and eastern part of Turkey. Data for the study came from different sources, including unstructured observations, one-to-one interviews with school principal and nine teachers, a focus group interview with nine parents and analysis of different types of documents. Data collection and analysis went hand in hand for the study. The study produced five theoretical propositions that were found to connect to a major process, which was called “breaking vicious cycle” by the researcher. These propositions generally suggest that there is a kind of vicious cycle in the functioning of a school in atypical contex that needs to be broken through making some collective changes in the daily life of school. For these changes to create a transformation in the school, it was suggested that the concept of education and the concept of school, as well as, teachers and principals’ role definitions should be redefined in the light of radical and critical educational views.