Marife Dini Araştırmalar Dergisi

Öz

The individual has stages of cognitive, affective and psychosocial change starting from infancy throughout his life. The most important of these is infancy and early childhood, which also affects all other stages of an individual's life. Early childhood encompasses the entire pre-school stage, starting from the early years of childhood. It is known that the individual's physical, social, emotional and mental development is the fastest in this phase, which covers 0 - 72 months. Considering the importance of the education of preschool individuals all over the world and in Turkey recently, this education has been given weight in terms of quantity and quality. Considering that in addition to the emotional development of individuals in this period, some spiritual needs should be met, and the studies of Ratcliff and Damon in the new period are examined, it has been revealed that early childhood spirituality is a biological fact. In addition, when the researches of Fowler, Oser and Elkind are examined, it is known that the details of the spiritual development stages of the same period were revealed. Thus, the existence and necessity of religious education for early childhood individuals has been placed on an academic basis. When the early childhood education approaches are examined, Montessori stands out as an important name. Standing out with her educator identity as well as being a doctor, Montessori has aroused repercussions all over the world with the education approach she developed especially for early childhood individuals. According to her, although the early childhood period is considered critical, it corresponds to the 0-3 (subconscious development) and 3-6 (consciousness development) ranges. Scientifically revealing that all the gains acquired in this period affect the life of the individual in the next stages, Montessori tried to enrich the achievements of individuals in these age ranges with the education approach she developed. Montessori has succeeded in getting rid of the monotonous approaches and traditional education understanding of the period by bringing a different perspective to education with the educational institutions it opened, the materials it developed, the courses it created for teachers, and the research methods that integrated its clinical psychology experimental studies into educational sciences. Again, Montessori believed that the individual's spiritual development exists in early childhood and emphasized that his developmental needs at this stage should be met. Dealing with spiritual development in the context of the relationship with God and moral development, Montessori brought a different perspective to the religious education of individuals in this period. The purpose of this research is to examine Montessori's understanding of religious education for the early childhood child. Montessori education method has been used effectively in educational science studies in Turkey and has been the subject of both theory and applied research. However, it is striking that Montessori's understanding of religious education is not taken into account at the same rate in scientific studies conducted in Turkey. This research theoretically deals with Montessori's early childhood religious education method directly from her own works and the works of some of his commentators. In the study, primary sources were tried to be reached, and then related books, articles and theses were included. Montessori's understanding of early childhood religious education was examined by subjecting it to document analysis, one of the qualitative research methods. Document analysis is a research technique in which various documents are collected, reviewed, interrogated and analyzed as the primary source of research data. For the general principles of the Montessori education method, categories were created by dividing them into themes, and they were examined under certain headings suitable for these themes. As a result of this research, it has been seen that the Montessori early childhood education approach is compatible with the contemporary education system. In line with the parallelism of the understanding of early childhood religious education in Montessori with the Montessori education method, it has been concluded that all elements and principles used in the Montessori method are also compatible with contemporary religious education approaches, since they are used in Montessori's religious education approach.