FAMILY-CENTERED APPROACH TO EDUCATION

The discussions on the problems of discipline and quality in our schools and education system have risen dramatically. The understanding of Education as a kind of process that starts at home and continues at school and beyond has always changed in every age. Since the mid 20th century, various education politics and approaches have been tried within the Turkish education system. In this process, traditional and modern education approaches are sometimes applied in harmony and sometimes in conflict. As a result of the change in the understanding of education, the problems that we encounter in the process of change from traditional teacher centered approach to modern student centered approach, have become very difficult to solve. In this paper, we aim to initiate a discussion that can give a new direction to our understanding of education. In recent years, we have called this new approach “family centered education” with the help of the publications regarding the importance of the family involvement in education. In this new understanding, the responsibility of the child’s education should be shared by the family and the school; the family itself should become the source of education and the parents should be more aware of the education which their child receives and therefore, they should be more equipped to meet the needs of their children