Debates Reflected in the National Press on Visual Problem in an Astronomy Textbook

Abstract

In the 1950s in Turkey, textbooks held a crucial role in education and training. The Republic of Turkey, like many modern states, not only kept the principles and procedures of writing and reviewing textbooks very strict through the Board of Education but also took the debates and criticisms seriously. One of the examples of this is the debate about a visual in the Astronomy textbook written by Şerafettin Çintan, a mathematics teacher at Kabataş High School for Boys, which appeared in the Turkish press on 9-17 March 1955 and lasted for nine days. This study aims to analyze and evaluate said debate in the context of the political and pedagogical environment of the period. Designed as qualitative research, the present study is based on document analysis. As the data source of the study, the Astronomy textbook prepared by Şerafettin Çintan, the decisions of the Board of Education on astronomy textbooks, and the newspapers of the period were employed. The data collected within the scope of the study were analyzed through descriptive analysis. As a result of the study, it was found that the examining institutions concluded that the mustache-like shapes in the visuals used in the Astronomy textbook on 16 March 1955 were due to a cliche error and that the Board of Education accepted Şerafettin Çintan's book as a textbook again in December 1955.