Gelisim News

The winner of the  Sevilay Kaygalak Urban Studies Article Award, organized by Praxis, Turkey's leading academic journal,  was Asst. Prof. Dr. Leyla Bektaş Ata from Istanbul Gelisim University with article titled "Intergenerational Approach to Education in Slums: Borders, Expectations, and Preferences" that deals with intergenerational education and professional translations in a slum neighborhood in Izmir. The ceremony was held yesterday on the online platform due to coronavirus pandemics. Sharing her feelings before the ceremony, Ata said: “It is a pleasure for me to be worthy of this award. Such awards are very limited in the field of social sciences. It is very valuable for me that the qualitative research I have done received an award.”
 
Slums were examined over two generations
 
Providing information about the research, Ata said: “In the slum that I was working on, I handled people who migrated from Eastern Anatolia, Central Anatolia and Southeastern Anatolia, the Inner Aegean. This group consists of people with limited educational background, many of whom are primary school graduates. I called the second generation of individuals between the ages of 20 and 40, who are the children of this group, and carried out my work over two generations. In the study, I dealt with the relationship of the second generation with education, access to education opportunities as urban poor from the slum area and class movement opportunities through education.”
 
“Profession choices are not geared towards interests and skills”
 
Referring to the data obtained in the research, Ata continued as follows: “Second generation individuals think that they participate in educational opportunities unequally because of living in the slum area. They are also not satisfied with the quality of institutions providing education in the slum areas. Even if they are entitled to attend more prestigious schools, they are afraid to be students in these schools. They do not have the socioeconomic opportunities required by socialization in these schools. This situation causes young people to question their school preferences while participating in education. In addition, families want their children to have a desk job shortly. For this reason, they mostly direct their children to vocational high schools. In vocational high schools, the preference of the department is for the professions of the period. As a matter of fact, the accounting department is dominant for those born in the 80s and 90s. Then the computer and IT departments came forward. In addition, in the career preferences, a path towards catching the spirit of the period is followed, not according to the interests and skills of the individuals in the second generation. Because these groups fight poverty and care that their children can get a job without requiring university education. Their budgets for education are also limited. However, in general, we witness that the individuals in this group live high school life and are not employed in the fields they are studying. Serious conflicts arise because their education does not match business life.”