LAUSR

ABSTRACT The Ministry of National Education (MoNE) in Turkey operates two kinds of public school for pre-school education: kindergartens, and pre-primary classrooms. The former are specifically for young children aged 36–60 months old, whilst the latter fall under the administration of primary schools and are for children aged up to 60 months old. An instrumental case study was chosen as the study design to examine the differences between the two school types. The purpose of this study is to compare working conditions in kindergarten and pre-primary classrooms based on the experiences of 70 pre-school education teachers (60 females, 10 males), 35 of whom worked in kindergartens and 35 in pre-primary classrooms. This study revealed distinct differences between two kinds of pre-school education schools, which appeared in their physical and educational environments, administrative styles, relationships in school, workloads and the ultimate choice of school based on these differences.