EMOTION REGULATION IN PRESCHOOL PERIOD: ACADEMIC RESEARCHES IN TURKEY

The study aims to investigate research studies conducted in Turkey from 1996 to 2016 on the emotion regulation in preschool period. Within the scope of the present study 10 Master's and 1 Doctoral theses as well as 3 research papers have been found. The theses and research papers were classified according to the years when the studies were conducted, to the research type, research design, data collection tools, methods and the cities where the data were collected. The theses were gathered from the thesis centre of Council of Higher Education and the research papers were obtained through the index scanning of Google Scholar, Ulakbim-Journal Park, Taylor&Francis Online, Science Direct, Web of Science, Academic Search Complete and ERIC. This study was performed using epistemological document analysis method. Descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage were made use of for the distribution according to the year when Master's and Doctoral theses and the research papers were performed and the methods and techniques used. According to the research results, it is observed that studies carried out on the emotion regulation skills in preschool period in our country have not reached a desired level yet; this issue still remains understudied. As a contribution to the field, it is suggested to include the issue of emotion regulation in the master's and doctoral theses. In pre-school period, validity-reliability studies can be carried out by developing different measurement tools to examine emotion regulation skills of children. Also intercultural studies in which the emotion regulation skills of children in different countries are compared to emotion regulation skills of children in our country might be performed.