Children behavior could be observed in various contexts including but not limited in home, school, and neighborhood where they spend their everyday lives. In this sense, children behavior and social interaction are dependent in the context that involve children’s array of relationships and activities within a particular setting. Studies investigating children’s behavior shift their focus from structured and monitored environments to less structured and less monitored environments (Galliger, Tisak, & Tisak, 2009). From this perspective, school buses offer a scarcely studied context in which various social interactions took place. The school bus have rather different context than  home and school as it is an unstructured and non-monitored very confined space (Galliger, Tisak, & Tisak, 2009).

Student transportation  started with horse drawn carriage in 19^th century. Then trucks were redesigned as school bus. First vehicles, those were designed for a specific purpose to transport school children, manufactured in 1920 and 1930.   In 1936 national school bus standards were issued in US and all school buses were required to be yellow by law in order to be distinguished by all drivers in nationwide (Akyüz, Bailey-Torres & Bomba-Edgerton, 2011). Currently several standards were determined for young children’s transportation. For instance, school bus drivers have regular duties such as; operating the school bus safely and supervising the safety of all young passengers. In addition to these regular duties, the drivers should also have general knowledge about the development of young children, the age-appropriate physical handling, communication and behavior management of them  (NSTA, 2010). Drivers’ burden is greater than people’s expectation as they are the first person that children first encounter in the morning and also the last person with whom children interact during  school time (Dawson & Sanders, 1997).

National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (2017) reported that 450,000 public school buses transport 23.5 million children to and from school and school-related activities in United States every year. When we think about educational system school bus drivers are the least likely stakeholders to be remembered. It is imperative that more attention should be given into training and controlling of staff assigned in school buses (Akyüz, Bailey-Torres & Bomba-Edgerton, 2011).

School bus drivers were not given enough recognition as professionals in education system. Thus they did not receive any training about child development or communicating with children.  It is important to offer in-service training to school bus drivers, as they have the ultimate responsibility in their hands. Schools should continually monitor their school bus drivers and look for ways to promote safety, atmosphere and communication in school buses for the most comfortable and safest transportation possible for our nation’s children. Research on the pre-school children transportation to school to date has hardly been definitive in Turkey. As such, this study equipped with the purpose of investigating pre-school education school buses condition. More precisely, this study seeks to answer following questions:

1)     How safety is maintained in pre-school education buses?

2)     How is the physical and social atmosphere of pre-school buses? 

3)     How do pre-school education bus drivers communicate with children? 

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