Dr. Muge Artar
Associate Professor Dr. Muge Artar works at Ankara University, Faculty of Educational Sciences department of Educational Psychology; who is the director of Ankara University Center for Research on Child Culture since 2010. Dr. Muge Artar is also the Deputy Head of Educational Psychology and Museum Education Department. Her interest areas are Cognitive Development, Enhancement of Children at Risk Groups, Child Culture and Museum Education. Dr. Artar had run different projects with Bernard Van Leer Foundation about Agricultural Migrant Worker’s 0-6 years of aged children’s lives. Seasonal migrants’ realities: a study of 686 Turkish households is one of them. Every year between April and November, hundreds of thousands of seasonal agricultural workers in Turkey leave their permanent residences and migrate to agriculturally intensive areas for jobs such as planting, harvesting and hoeing. Many take their young children. This project helped us to understand a study of 686 households, revealing more about the reality of the lives of these seasonal migrant families. Associate Professor Dr. Muge Artar's team begin to study life conditions of these children during their travel of working at 2009. It was the first research project. After that Dr. Muge Artar and her team try to find out the route of their work during a year. This retrospective and futuristic project really effects the field because it was the first study to show how many people were traveling and where to travel during agricultural work. The last project was an application project. After working with this group about five years Dr. Muge Artar feels the responsibility to empower the women and so the children. At the region of south east of Turkey 4 cities selected as giving the most of the migrant agricultural workers to all over the country. First a module were developed and 40 women from these cities were trained to be a trainee for their friends. This module consist of information about child rearing; health, hygiene and social emotional and cognitive developmental tips for their children. All modules were consisted of illustrations and little tips about it. Nowadays this project is going to be finalized. About 2000 women (illiterate and less fortunate) were trained by their friends. Associate Professor Dr. Muge Artar was graduated from Middle East Technical University Department of Psychology. She first started her carreer at adoption of Sesame Street Program at Turkish Radio and Televison Corporation. In her career she runs several different projects about Child Development. She is married with two sons.
