Restructuring reforms in Turkish teacher education: Modernisation and development in a dynamic environment

Abstract

The paper examines the effectiveness of recent reforms in teacher education in Turkey, specifically the restructuring of programmes in university faculties of education. It first, briefly, sets the reforms of the 1990s in an historical context, prior to the 1997 Act which increased the length of compulsory schooling from 5 to 8 years, and the 1998 restructuring of faculties of education. It considers the national need for the restructuring of teacher education and the issues involved. The thrust of the paper is a study of how teacher educators across the country perceive both the changes and their effect on the quality of teacher education, methodology as a discipline, school partnerships, and relationships with the Ministry of National Education. r

Teacher education accreditation in Turkey: The creation of a culture of quality

“…While there is not a large literature regarding response rates in CSAQ studies, the response rate of Phase I was generally in conformity with what one expects in selfadministered studies utilizing other modalities, such as mail (Miller and Salkind, 2002). This sample was given an internet-based survey instrument in Turkish with 82 questions including both scaled response and open-ended questions (Grossman and Sands, 2008).…”

“…The research was a comprehensive examination of the reform in teacher education in Turkey during this period. The data for the present paper as well as three previous papers (Grossman and Onkol, 2006;Grossman et al, 2007;Grossman and Sands, 2008) come from this research.…”

“…So, by the end of the NEDP pre-service teacher education project in mid-1999, not only were the goals of the pre-service teacher education reform implemented (Grossman et al, 2007) and the national system of faculties of education restructured (Grossman and Sands, 2008), but also an accreditation system was built which could serve both the present and future faculties of education.…”

Pre-Service Language Teacher Education in Turkey

“…In the 18th century, relations with France resulted in increasing French language teaching movement [4,8]. There were basically two kinds of schools: Sıbyan (meaning child) schools providing primary education where Arabic was taught and Medrese schools providing higher education where Arabic was the medium of instruction [5].…”

“…Since people experienced harsh conditions of life losing the 'brains' of the country in the various battle especially the one fought in Gallipoli, there was the need to restructure in almost every single area. Education was in the top priorities [8]. Within this scope, 'the law on unification of education' was passed from the parliament in 1924 with the idea of organizing and restructuring educational institutions giving the authority to the Ministry of National Education [6].…”