Investigation of Teacher's Perceptions of the Educational Problems of Bilingual Students in Terms of Some Variables

Abstract

In the wake of the spreading universalization in the world, cultural interactions and developments also reflect on the language structure of societies. Cultural interactions result in an increase in the number of bilingual and multilingual individuals. This study seeks to examine the perceptions of teachers about the educational problems of bilingual students in terms of some variables. Conducted with the screening method, one of the quantitative research methods, this study used the 29-item Bilingualism Educational Problem Scale of Likert-type developed by the researchers as a data collection tool. An online questionnaire form was used to collect the data. The population consists of 500 teachers from 10 different branches (f: 290; in: 210), working in various regions of Turkey under the Ministry of National Education. In the analysis of the research data, descriptive statistics, independent groups t-test, and One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used. The reliability analysis of the Bilingualism Educational Problem Scale was performed and Cronbach's alpha reliability value was found to be .90. The results show that there was a significant difference between the teachers' perceptions of the educational problems of bilingual students in terms of years of service, branch, degree, socioeconomic environment variables, but no significant difference was found in terms of gender and graduation status.