مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - An Assessment of Restructured Social Studies Program in Turkey

Abstract :

Turkish education system has been developed taking into consideration a different perspective by setting a constructivist approach from the traditional concept of education since the 2005-2006 academic year. The restructured program has been implemented for 5 years. Research shows that many problems encountered during the implementation of the program. The encountered problems have been identified through a nationwide research study carried by EARGED in 2006 along with some other local level research studies. The purpose of this research is to determine how many of the problems, identified by EARGED’s study done in 2006, have been solved or addressed while how many of them have been still remaining. The data is collected from participants who are 6, 7 and 8th grade students who had taken social studies courses and their teachers in 16 public elementary schools located in Konya, Turkey. The collected data through this research study is compared with the findings of the EARGED’s research and a general assessment is made. asemi-structured interview schedule and a questionnaire were used to collect data from teachers and students. In qualitative analysis of the data literature which is related is scanned and descriptive analysis was conducted. Findings of this research reveals that teachers training needs are observed mostly in areas such as “measurement and evaluation”,“knowledge about special education”, “use of information technologies” and “activity preparation” etc. and these problems still continue. At the same time the students’ problems are observed with “access to research resources”, “participation in activities or active involvement,” “teacher-student relations” and problems in such areas are still continuing.