Examining Peer Relationships in Transition to Primary School in the Pandemic Process with Teacher and Parent Opinions

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, which emerged in the last days of 2019, continues to be effective until today. In terms of education, especially the 2020-2021 academic year has been almost entirely online. Considering that schools are the place where children are most together with their peers, peer relations are one of the most disrupted issues during the pandemic process. For this reason, this study aims to examine peer relations during the transition to primary school by taking the opinions of parents and teachers. A case study, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the research. In the study, in which ten parents and six teachers participated, demographic information forms and interview questions were used as data collection tools. As a result of the research, in which content analysis was used in the analysis of the data, it was determined that parents and teachers thought that there were changes in the social-emotional and behavioural development of children during the pandemic process and that they thought that there were negative peer relationships as well as positive peer relationships during the transition to school. The findings are discussed in the light of the relevant literature.