Preschool teacher training systems in Turkey and European Union countries

Providing well-qualified educational environments to children in early years of their lives is effective on development levels of countries. In this context, processes followed during preschool teacher training play distinctive role. In this study, it is aimed to examine the preschool teacher training systems in Turkey and European Union countries. To this purpose, currently being implemented in Turkey, preschool teacher training model, educational institutions, training period, programs and entry requirements were evaluated with applications in several EU countries. Although there are some differences in some scopes, as a result of this study there is not a wide inconsistency between preschool teacher training systems of EU countries and Turkey. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.