Investigation of Ethnopedagogical Factors in Teacher Education: Kyrgyzstan Sample

The purpose of this study is to investigate the ethnopedagogy education in the teacher education programs in Kyrgyzstan. Basic qualitative research method was applied in the study. The data were collected through document review and interviews with graduate students from Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University and instructors. The researcher stayed in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for 50 days to collect the data, the documents and to plan and conduct the interviews. The data collected via document review and interviews, were analyzed by content analysis method. As a result of the analysis, information about the ethnopedagogy class at Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University teacher education program was reviewed and the instructors’ opinions about ethnopedagogy education at teacher education programs and the graduate students’ opinions about the ethnopedagogy class were identified. The most important result can be seen as that instructors and students give great importance to ethnopedagogy and adopt its ideas. They also indicated further insight and concrete proposals. As a country with a deep and rich history, it would be a great chance for Turkey to benefit from this educational experience.

historical and socially important events based on past and current generations' experiences are conveyed to new generations in order to maintain that community. This system, which is based on people's own experiences, is referred to as 'folk education' (Volkov, 1974). Folk education is defined in the literature as follows: "Information, experience and methodology that covers educational ideas and experiences reflected in the resources such as oral and written works of the people, customs and traditions, clothing styles, eating habits, marriage, birth, death ceremonies, music and art studies, concise words, games, toys with their purposes, methods and materials and that relates to all people without any discrimination according to features such as gender and age" (Alimbekov, 2012).
Ethnopedagogy, on the other hand, appears as a branch of science that enables the research of folk education and its role in the development of contemporary education system. Folk education is considered as a system that of scientific examination described as ethnopedagogy as also named as "folk education system" in the literature.
The term ethnopedagogy was created by combining the words "ethnology and pedagogy". This concept entered the world of science by the works of Volkov carried out in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1974 Volkov described ethnopedagogy as a branch of science that explores the pedagogy of the family and nation in terms of experience, perspective and social balance in our lives in general (as cited in Alimbekov, 2007). Latyshina & Khayrullin (2014) defined ethnopedagogy briefly as a discipline that works the possible use of folk culture and pedagogy for educating the young generation. Zaydullina (2015) describes ethnopedagogy as an organic component of general pedagogy that aims to restore the knowledge, skills and personality traits that people value. From this point of view, it can be said that ethnopedagogy, as well as expressing the concept of folk education system, is a branch of science that explores, systematizes and extends folk education. Folk education expresses its own educational ideas, methods, experiences and practices which is formed by the people themselves, while ethnopedagogy refers to the discipline scientifically researching, systematizing and presenting these ideas, methods and experiences of the people. In other words, folk education is the basis and source of ethnopedagogy science. When characteristics of ethnopedagogy are considered, it can be said that the original knowledge of a society and the wisdom that the society has developed with this knowledge are based on very strong foundations and have a solid structure. Ethnopedagogy's handling of such a strong and solid knowledge as a resource is very important for today's education to be realized more effectively.
Ethnopedagogy develops as a discipline for two main purposes. The first one is to make systematic research of ideas and experiences about the folk education that people have acquired from the past to the present, developed gradually in their daily life and reflected in their oral and written works and traditions. The second one is to investigate the ways of using this rich structure of folk education effectively in today's education systems and programs and to offer suggestions about it (Alimbekov, 2007). Ethnopedagogy also examines national educational methods and traditions from a scientific point of view (Shavadi, 2015). Thus, ethnopedagogy is quite important in respect to being beneficial for the practice not only because it systemically explains the folk education that exist but also because it aims to contribute to today's education based on those explanations. Some problems and fields of study which ethnopedagogy focuses on are listed by Alimbekov (2012): • To bring the child to society based on the basic pedagogical gains of the people, • To examine the basic sources of peoples' pedagogical science and experiences, • To investigate the content, achievements and characteristics of the traditional cultural education adopted by the public, • Examine the factors affecting teaching in folk education, • To examine the methods of teaching in folk education, • To investigate and examine the tools of teaching in folk education, • To examine the structures and educational concepts of human being in social lifestyle, • To compare the peoples of the world in terms of pedagogical features and to reveal similarities and differences, • To study on folk educators, • To study the ideal types of people who are pedagogically settled among the peoples and to work on the development of today's educational programs in ethnopedagogical aspects, • To work on the development of ethnopedagogical competencies of teachers and parents.
Ethnopedagogy has a very important place in the development and existence of nations as a newly developing discipline basically for two interrelated reasons. Firstly, it focuses on the values and characteristics that have been created by the people themselves in a special way, and then it enables folk education to be visible and scientifically and systemically researched. Anwar-Hafid et al. (2015), who stated that ethnopedagogy sees local knowledge and wisdom as the source for the recovery and development of society, expresses the characteristics of the local knowledge and wisdom which they quoted from Alwasilah (2008): • Obtained through experience, • Tested for centuries, • Adaptable to contemporary culture, • Combined with daily practice and social life, • Generally applied by an individual or community, • Always live and variable, • It is largely associated with the belief system. Today, folk education and ethnopedagogy are trying to survive in the education system and their presence in the education system can be seen in Figure 1: As it is seen in Figure 1, ethnopedagogy encompasses all elements of folk education and can now be carried out through formal or informal education. The elements of folk education and ethnopedagogy such as national values, traditions, epics, proverbs, etc., are included in both formal and non-formal education and also can be transferred by parents, environment and society through informal ways.
From an ethnopedagogical point of view, the values of the peoples and their past experiences are sometimes conveyed by the family elders, sometimes minstrels, poets, writers or fairy tales as teachers. There are many educational elements that come from ancient times and are still used, such as proverbs, epics, educational tales and poems. Today, however, the educational role of ethnopedagogy which is the transfer of culture and values, is being largely done by teachers in the education system. This means teachers should be informed about this in order to effectively develop folk education roles within the ethnopedagogy. Therefore, ethnopedagogical training of teachers is one of the most important issues of ethnopedagogy. Professional preparation of the teachers for ensuring that the education of children is in accordance with the values of the nation has been at the center of the thought of all the scholars of all societies. Volkov, who established a relationship between the life stories of the great and classical educators and the educational views, have come to the conclusion that 'the folk educators have always been great, and the great educators have always been interested in folk' (Alimbekov, 2015). Today, what is expected from a modern teacher is not only to act as a source of information, but also to work in multicultural environments, to be aware of his / her own ethnic culture and to respect and be aware of other ethnic cultures (Kuzmin et al., 2014). In this respect, the importance of the teachers' knowledge about the values, culture, customs and traditions of the society they live in, and the importance of being able to transfer these to the students are increasing day by day. Teachers' ability to acquire these knowledge and competences depends on their ethnopedagogical training. Alimbekov (2015) draws attention to the fact that educating teachers in an ethnopedagogical aspect is an integral and inevitable part of the training of qualified educators, besides, ethnopedagogical competence of the teacher is a humanistic and integrative feature.
Although ethnopedagogy is a newly formed field, its ideas date back to long before. The great educators interested in folk and education and their ideas have formed the basis of the emergence of ethnopedagogy in teacher education. Comenius, Pestalozzi, Ushinsky and Russian writer and educator Leo Tolstoy can be named as some of these outstanding great educators.
As explained above, ethnopedagogy is of great importance in terms of effective educational experiences and values brought from the past to contribute to today's education. In order to achieve this aim, first of all, the curricula should be developed in terms of ethnopedagogy, and the ethnopedagogical competence of the teachers should be ensured in order to apply these curricula in a qualified manner.
With the increasing importance given to ethnopedagogy in teacher training, studies in which teacher education programs are examined from an ethnopedagogical point of view become more important. Unfortunately, no Turkish source has been encountered on this subject except Alimbekov (2007) and available English resources are limited. The fact that the countries in which ethnopedagogy is especially emphasized is that of Russia and Central Asian countries, the studies on this subject are concentrated in Russian or other Central Asian languages such as Kyrgyz and Kazakh language. In this study, the case of Kyrgyzstan, which has a rich content in terms of ethnopedagogy applications in both the ethnopedagogy studies and teacher education, is examined.
The importance of ethnopedagogy in Central Asian countries is linked to their educational backgrounds. At the period of the Soviet Union, schools were seen as a means of demolishing society from national values, and those values began to disappear in the individuals raised from the perspective of communism (Alimbekov, 2015). In recent years, especially in post-independence Kyrgyzstan, many concepts, new disciplines, programs and textbooks have been developed in order to improve the content of education in the elementary schools on the basis of ethno-cultural values, and the effectiveness of these efforts has been based only on the ethnopedagogical aspects of the teachers (Alimbekov, 2015). However, the fact that the content of ethnopedagogical education could not be based on scientific foundations has become one of the most important problems in this field. This study is thought to be important in terms of increasing the number of scientists working on this subject, making more studies and contributing to the literature in order to increase awareness in Turkish literature to eliminate the problems experienced in ethnopedagogical science.
Eventually, in this study, it is aimed to examine ethnopedagogy education in teacher education programs in Kyrgyzstan. Within the scope of this general objective, the following sub-objectives were sought: 1. What are the features of the Ethnopedagogy course such as purpose, content and learning outcomes?
2. What are the opinions of the educators about ethnopedagogy education in teacher education programs in Kyrgyzstan?
3. What are the opinions of the students who have received a graduate level ethnopedagogy education?

Research Design
Considering the aim, basic qualitative research design was applied in this study in order to examine the course features and the opinions of Kyrgyz educators and students on ethnopedagogy education in Kyrgyzstan teacher training programs. As Merriam (2009) states basic qualitative research is used for understanding how people make sense of their lives and interpret their experiences. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine ethnopedagogy education in teacher education programs in Kyrgyzstan via course documents and opinions of instructors and students about their experiences of ethnopedagogy.

Participants
Convenience sampling and snowball sampling were used to determine the participants for interviews. Of the four instructors reached in Bishkek working on this subject three of them were interviewed. Interviews with two of the Kyrgyz instructors were in Turkish whereas the other in Kyrgyz. Since the subject did not speak Turkish the interview was carried out with the help of translation of a bilingual Kyrgyz doctoral student. The interviews were transcribed, and the Kyrgyz parts were translated into Turkish by the same bilingual student. Information about the participants and the interviews are shown in Table 1 and Table 2

Data Collection Tools
Two semi-structured interview schedules both for the instructors and the students were prepared based on the information obtained as a result of the literature review. The interview schedules were reviewed in the aspects of structure, language, expression and subject scope by experts. In all interviews, the participants stated that they attend the study voluntarily by signing the voluntary participation form.

Data Collection
The data were obtained through document review and interviews in line with the purpose of the research and the research questions. In order to follow the research more closely, to reach the necessary resources and documents and to plan and conduct the negotiations, the researcher stayed in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan for 50 days.
In the first phase of this research, the related literature about ethnopedagogy, ethnopedagogical training of the teachers, historical foundations and practices in Kyrgyzstan along with ethnopedagogy course syllabuses were reviewed. In the second phase of the study, the interviews with instructors and graduate students were carried out.

Data Analysis
The data obtained through the document review and interviews were analyzed by the content analysis method which is a qualitative data analysis technique. Expert opinion was consulted during the analysis phase. The data sets, codes and themes were reviewed five times in total by the researcher, then the raw data, the codes and the themes created were reviewed by the other researcher and the reliability level was calculated as 89% (Miles & Huberman, 1994).

Results
The data obtained from the document review and interviews are presented in three sub-sections considering the aim of the study.

Findings Related to the Ethnopedagogy Course
At the undergraduate and graduate levels, the course of ethnopedagogy was examined and as a result, information about course type, weekly course hours, language used in the course, purpose, learning outcomes, content and assessment-evaluation were obtained. The findings related to the mentioned information are shown in Table 3.

Aim
Methodological and theoretical preparation of pre-service teachers for the development of education on the basis of ethnopedagogy.
To enable the teacher candidates to have knowledge about ethnopedagogy and its characteristics and basic sources of folk education.
The course is offered in undergraduate and graduate level as an elective course in Kyrgyz language. While it is a three-hour theoretical course at undergraduate level, the two hours of the three-hour course is practice at the graduate level. Although the aim of the course is generally to provide students with theoretical knowledge at both levels, the aim is explained as to provide pre-service teachers at undergraduate level with the theoretical and methodological preparation for the development of education on the basis of ethnopedagogy while it is to enable the teacher candidates to have knowledge about ethnopedagogy and its characteristics and basic sources of folk education at graduate level. The following Table 4 presents the content of ethnopedagogy course at undergraduate and graduate levels: As can be seen in Table 4, the course differs considerably in terms of content at the undergraduate and graduate levels. At the undergraduate level, it is observed that some of the important works in the literature or the major thinkers' educational thoughts are emphasized. On the graduate level, it is seen that the scientific foundations of ethnopedagogy and the general and upper-level topics are emphasized. Therefore, by giving information about the historical foundations of ethnopedagogy and important thinkers about this subject at the undergraduate level, it is attempted to raise awareness about the ethnopedagogical characteristics of the Turkish and Kyrgyz peoples and to enable teacher candidates to make use of these issues when they start to teach. At the graduate level, it can be stated that there is an effort to make students be more specialized in ethnopedagogy besides raising awareness about ethnopedagogy. To be aware of Kyrgyz and Turkish rich educational heritage.
To be able to know and distinguish the resources of Kyrgyz and Turkish peoples' rich educational heritage.
To be able to analyze the educational heritage of the Kyrgyz and Turkish peoples.
To benefit from Kyrgyz and Turkish peoples' educational heritage for contemporary education.
To know ethnopedagogical methodological principles in terms of educational history.
To gain a deep understanding and true interpretation ability of the key concepts, expressions and values in ethnopedagogy.
To gain experience in the development of education ethnopedagogically.
To have a critical approach in teaching activities.
As can be seen in Table 5, the learning outcomes at the undergraduate and graduate levels of the course are indicated in accordance with the purpose and content of the course. The learning outcomes of the course include analysis at the undergraduate level and both analysis and practice at graduate level. Furthermore, the learning outcomes aimed at gaining the skills and experience at the graduate level indicate that the learning outcomes of the practice parts at this level are also included. That means the outcomes are compatible with the course design.

Findings Related to the Opinions of Instructors
In this section, the results of the analysis of semi-structured interviews with ethnopedagogy instructors about the importance, purpose, rationales, problems of ethnopedagogy in teacher education programs and recommendations are discussed. The views of the instructors about the importance of ethnopedagogy education in teacher education programs in Kyrgyzstan are shown in Table 6 below: As can be seen in Table 6, a total of four views have emerged about the importance of ethnopedagogy education in the teaching programs of teachers in Kyrgyzstan. It was found that the opinion of "importance for raising children according to national values" was repeated by the two instructors. In the same way" Having an important function for the realization of national ideology" was also expressed by three instructors. In terms of the importance for teacher education, the Instructors were asked about "what should be the objectives of ethnopedagogy education in teacher education programs in Kyrgyzstan" and the opinions reflected are shown below: The views of the instructors about the purpose of ethnopedagogy education in teacher training programs in Kyrgyzstan were combined in two themes. All the three instructors stated, ethnopedagogy education has goals both for the country and for the professional development of pre-service teachers. As the purpose for the country, four aims were "to protect the national values of the people, revitalizing national education, maintaining and improving folk education and to ensure that people / students from different countries know each other" were stated. The purpose of the teacher education for them was "to infuse their duties to teacher candidates in terms of ethnopedagogy, to enable teacher candidates to gain the necessary skills to perform their duties in terms of ethnopedagogy, to make teachers learn the methods of ethnopedagogy and to enable teachers to recognize students from minority people".
The views of the instructors on the rationales for ethnopedagogy education in Kyrgyzstan teacher education programs are shown in Table 8: As seen in Table 8, their opinions about the rationales of ethnopedagogy education were stated as receiving a lot of immigration, being a multinational state, the presence of many foreign students, large number of foreign schools, having had two major revolutions, the fact that families cannot fulfill their responsibilities to transfer national values to their children and the effect of the Manas epic on the Kyrgyz people besides influence from Russian culture and loss of national values. When looked at Table  8 it is seen that the rationales for ethnopedagogy education is in relation to the need for ethnopedagogy itself. Thus, it can be said that the causes that give rise to ethnopedagogy also led to the emergence of ethnopedagogy education.
As a result of the analysis of the interviews with the instructors, some problems in the implementation of ethnopedagogy education in teacher education programs were identified. The instructors highlighted the following problems in Table 9: The instructors who stated their opinions on ethnopedagogy education in teacher education also made some suggestions to make this education more effective. The instructors who attended the interviews made seven suggestions to make to ethnopedagogy education more effective in teacher training programs. These suggestions are shown in Table 10.

Findings Related to the Opinions of Students
The results of the analysis of semi-structured interviews with students who attended the ethnopedagogy course at graduate level is discussed in this section. The results composed of the themes as follows; their opinions about the course, their responsibilities for the course, knowledge and abilities they obtained from the course and their recommendations. Table 11 shows the responsibilities expected by the students to be fulfilled within the scope of the ethnopedagogy course.

Preparing theoretical research homework about each topic
Presenting examples from their own experiences Making an ethnopedagogical examination and presenting it in the classroom Preparing and publishing articles at the end of the course As seen in Table 11, students have the responsibilities of doing some researches as homework, presenting examples from their own lives and besides, doing a real research and publishing it. Considering these responsibilities, it is seen that the students are quite active in the course and has many responsibilities to fulfill.
The students were asked to express their feelings about the ethnopedagogy course, and they defined the course as follows in Table 12: One of the students stated that the course was both surprising and interesting, and each of the other opinions was indicated by different students. Therefore, students expressed their thoughts about the lesson in different words. It can be said that the content of the course or the activities in the course, with the views of the students, surprised the students, but also made them think.
When the students were asked about what they have learned in the course and what knowledge they were given, they stated the following information in Table 13: The analysis in Table 13 shows that the students who attended the ethnopedagogy course gained some knowledge about ethnopedagogy as a science, role of ethnopedagogy in education and Kyrgyz ethnopedagogy in general and other knowledge in these themes. It was found out that teachers thought that they gained some competences in terms of their professional development as well as the knowledge they acquired in the course. These competences are shown in Table 14. To be able to provide support for teaching by using ethnopedagogical resources To be able to share what he / she knows about ethnopedagogy with his / her students To be able to enable their students to gain the identity of their people To be able to lead students from different nationalities to respect each other To give students the right habit When looked at the competences the students gained during the course, it can be seen that the course was useful for their professional development in the sense of ethnopedagogy enabling them to use their knowledge in their own teaching. It is seen that the ethnopedagogy course also provided them with support and solutions to reflect on their classrooms with students from different nations.
Finally, the students were asked to give some suggestions on the course to be more effective and their suggestions are indicated below in Table 15: When the students' suggestions about the course are examined, it is seen that they are oriented towards practical activities. Therefore, it can be said that although the course is theoretical, more applied researches and real-life experiences should be taken into consideration.
Based on the findings of the research, some of the significant results can be listed as follows: • Ethnopedagogy education in teacher education programs is important both for transfer of national culture and teacher training in the country as its transmitters.
• Prospective teachers believe that Ethnopedagogy education aims to reach important goals in terms of cultural traits and values of the country by raising new generations.
• The most important reasons for the need for ethnopedagogy education in teacher education programs are the social structure of Kyrgyzstan and the effects of the Soviet Union on Kyrgyzstan.
• Kyrgyzstan being a multinational state affected by the Russian culture during the Soviet Union and with many foreigners accommodated in the country, has resulted in the emergence of ethnopedagogy and ethnopedagogy education.
• With the impact of the Bologna process, there has been a significant decrease in the number of courses that incorporates ethnopedagogy training in teacher education programs.
• The instructors believe that the Bologna process, the concept of modern education, and the fact that educational books and materials are not of a public nature lead to problems during ethnopedagogy education in teacher education programs.
• By fulfilling the responsibilities, graduate students actively participate in the class and present a scientific study at the end of the course.
• Graduate students described the lesson as active, philosophical, serious, surprising, exciting and interesting. No negative comments were made about the course.
• The ethnopedagogy course has given some competencies to graduate students in terms of teaching and thus contributed to their professional development.
• In the ethnopedagogy course, trainees wanted to organize more practical activities and benefit from real life experiences.

Discussion, Conclusion and Implications
All text Ethnopedagogy is a new education-related approach that is closely related to all processes related to education, and in particular to curriculum development. Ethnopedagogy, which is closely related with the theoretical foundations of curriculum, aims, content, teaching methods and techniques of education, is especially effective in transferring social and cultural values to younger generations. In particular, it is necessary to reveal the relationship between ethnopedagogy and teacher education and to discuss it in relation to teacher education programs. For this reason, it is important to examine ethnopedagogy practices in teacher education in the countries where ethnopedagogy is applied in teacher education. One of the common aims of all education systems is to teach both scientific and social experiences together at school. It would be appropriate to use ethnopedagogy to realize this aim of education and to realize the socialization and culturing function of the school.
This study was conducted in Kyrgyzstan, where the topics such as ethnopedagogy and training of the teachers in terms of ethnopedagogy were studied intensely. By doing so, it was aimed to pave the way for the studies related to ethnopedagogy and ethnopedagogical teacher training in Turkey.
When the findings of the research are discussed, the most important result would be the instructors and students giving great importance to ethnopedagogy and adopt its ideas. As a result of interviews with academic staff and students, very clear findings and concrete proposals emerged. It is especially important that the idea of teachers having a great knowledge of ethnopedagogy is significant for the country. In this respect, the importance of ethnopedagogy in teacher education programs is increasing.
Considering elements such as purpose, content, learning outcomes of the ethnopedagogy lesson examined within the scope of the research, it was seen that it is very important for the prospective teachers to learn and recognize their national identities, to look at the history of education with an ethnopedagogical approach and to provide positive effects on their professional qualifications. The inclusion of such a course in teacher education programs to make the prospective teachers gain these knowledge and competencies can be seen as a very important step in ensuring the transfer and preservation of the values to the future generations, which is one of the main goals of ethnopedagogy.
The study by Indiati et al (2020), in which they proposed an ethnopedagogy oriented learning model for student teachers, is one of the latest and comprehensive studies contributing to ethnopedagogy in teacher education. It can be seen that the characteristics of the model by Indiati et al (2020) have a great congruence with the characteristics of the ethnopedagogical factors generated in this study, besides offering utilization of websites making the model neoteric. Such studies should lead to the next ones.
In order to reveal the subjects of ethnopedagogy and its role on teacher training in Turkey, educators who train teachers should discuss the purpose, function, resources, effects and etc. of ethnopedagogy science initially. The fact that educators who train teachers raise awareness about ethnopedagogy and employ this awareness in teacher education will facilitate the implementation of ethnopedagogy in education. In this respect, scientific studies should be increased and ethnopedagogy should be contributed to develop as a science.
Ethnopedagogy, which is as old as the history of humanity, has been accepted as a science which includes studies about understanding, knowing and realizing the people's own culture and values. It can be said that ethnopedagogy has a direct relationship with the history of education. Today, the history of education is generally concerned with the previous educational systems, educational practices and policies in these schools. Unfortunately, the concept of education which was developed in accordance with the specific features of the folk, started before formal educational systems developed and survived to the present is not mentioned much. While elements such as traditions, epics, tales, proverbs, idioms, folk songs, lullabies, national clothes and festivals are studied in ethnography or folklore studies widely. However, it is not very much acknowledged that a large part of these elements was discovered by the public for the purpose of educating the next generation. Their emergence and how they were used to educate cannot be adequately studied by educational scientists. Some studies, though, have looked into how tales, stories or proverbs can be used in education. However, the educational messages in these texts are generally tried to be revealed superficially and it is not treated as an ethnopedagogical study in terms of folk education. For this reason, ethnopedagogy science should be further developed and more scientists should be working on this subject in a more effective way under the umbrella of ethnopedagogical science. When looked at the researches on ethnopedagogy, it is seen that most studies have been carried out and published in Russia and Central Asia due to many different types of nations in Russia and the effects of the Soviet Union period on the Central Asian States. During the Soviet Union, many of the Central Asian countries, which are independent today, became Russian and faced the loss of their national values. Faced with the danger of losing their national identity, these nations tried to convey their epics, fairy tales, proverbs, poetry, music and other ethnopedagogical resources to new generations, mainly through oral culture, in order to protect their identity. These nations with national consciousness, benefited from ethnopedagogy in maintaining their values and culture. During the Soviet Union period, the efforts of the ethnopedagogical practices to get rid of or weaken the Russian influence and to reintegrate the lost values continued and were accelerated after gaining independence. Ethnopedagogy, which was born within these works, has been highly valued as a science. It was furthermore noticed as a result of the scientific studies that teachers are the main agency to impart the ethnopedagogy knowledge and so it took its place in teacher education programs.
It is seen that the researches on this subject, after the concept of ethnopedagogy were put forward by Volkov, generally dealt with the ethnopedagogy of a certain people. The studies of Volkov (1958), Afanasyev (1966), Khanbikov (1967) and Gashimov (1970) are important examples. The reason for focusing on certain group of people is based on the assumption that all people should have a unique public education, thus ethnopedagogy, and that it is necessary to find out what the features of this uniqueness.
Although the concept of ethnopedagogy began to be used in the 1960s, the basic ideas of ethnopedagogy were previously put forward by prominent educators such as Comenius, Pestalozzi and Tolstoy. In our country, many ideas of the head teacher Atatürk are incoherence with the ideas defended by ethnopedagogy. Therefore, it can be said that the essence of ethnopedagogy emerged much earlier than itself. It is seen that Atatürk has frequently emphasized the public-teacher relationship, the importance of national education, the transfer of national values and culture, and the role of schools and teachers in this issue. To give an example of this, Atatürk shares his thoughts on the importance of national education and the necessity of education to be completely national in the following words in a speech made with Samsun teachers on 22 September 1924 (Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi [ATAM], 2006): Gentlemen! There should be no more confusion about knowing what national education means. In addition, after the national education, it is indisputable that the language, method and tools must be made national. It is necessary to carefully refrain from filling the young minds, who are wanted to be opened and raised by national education, with corrosive, somniferous and unreal surpluses.
Atatürk's words to the Istanbul Teachers' Delegation on July 7, 1927 in Dolmabahce Palace, "Teachers should take advantage of every occasion and run to the people, and they should be with the people and the people should understand that the teacher is not only an asset that reads the alphabet to the child" emphasized one of the most important ideas advocated by ethnopedagogy (ATAM, 2006).
Alimbekov, who wrote his doctoral thesis on ethnopedagogy education in the field of ethnopedagogy training, and his other work on this subject also contributed greatly to the field. In one of his studies (2012) he revealed the problems and fields which ethnopedagogy focuses on and he includes the studies on the development of ethnopedagogical competencies of teachers and parents in these areas of study. Ethnopedagogy in teacher education is therefore an important issue in this field. However, the concept of ethnopedagogy is still not well known, except in Asia. The most important reason for this is that the studies are usually conducted in languages other than English and not published outside the country of study. In addition, the fact that it has lately emerged is an important factor in this regard. Nevertheless, it is seen that some of the concepts which have been introduced later than ethnopedagogy were published in English or translated into other languages and the studies have become widespread. The proliferation of publications in different languages to create awareness on this issue in Turkey and other Western countries is very important. Especially for Turkey, with a deep and rich history of the country it would be a great chance to benefit from this educational experience. In this study, it was aimed to examine the teacher training programs in Kyrgyzstan in ethnopedagogical education in the teacher education programs. The views of instructors and graduate students who have been trained in ethnopedagogy are important in terms of revealing the perspectives of ethnopedagogy. As a result of this work, it is hoped to contribute to the literature in Turkey for the future researches by drawing attention to ethnopedagogy and ensuring the recognition of ethnopedagogy in teacher training.