Session Information
23 SES 09 C, Policy Actors from European Edges
Symposium
Contribution
The Turkish Education system has been identified as failing systems (Güven, 2012; Şimşek, 2015). Recent PISA 2015 results for Turkey shows a steady decline in all three areas- Math, Science and Reading. Turkey is one of the three countries in the bottom together with Chile and Mexico (Educational Reform Initiative Report on PISA 2015, 2016). Even though, there has been a major curriculum reform in Turkish education system – namely Constructivist curriculum - in 2005, the policy implementation phase has not been very successful due to lack of comprehensive evaluation of the new policy (Nir, Kondakci, & Emil, upcoming). Beyond the constructivist curriculum reform, the Educational Reform Initiative (2016) points out the major educational policy changes, such as 4+4+4 reform, principal appointment, re-structuring the Turkish Ministry of National Education (MEB), closing private tutoring houses, which have been implemented within very limited time frame without going through proper policy implementation cycles. As a result, Turkish educational system is suffering from major issues like quality in teaching and learning, the lack of public expenditure on education, equal access to education or educating the disadvantaged students. Currently, MEB has announced the most recent curriculum reform on its website (http://mufredat.meb.gov.tr/) inviting all stakeholders to provide feedback on the content of the curriculum. This reforms includes all the levels (Primary, Middle School and High School) and all the subject areas in Turkish Education System. However, the policy change has again been introduced without following a proper policy definition and formulation that considers the research findings on the constructivist curriculum and other issues in Turkish education system. The policy implementation will be carried over within the next 6 months period. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the three stages (problem definition, policy formulation and policy implementation) of the proposed policy change during that time frame. Document analysis and analysis of the printed media will be utilized to evaluate the policy reform in terms of above mentioned stages and set of suggestions in terms of policy implementation will be presented.
References
Educational Reform Initaitive Report on PISA 2015 (2016). Retrieved from http://www.egitimreformugirisimi.org/sites/www.egitimreformugirisimi.org/files/ERG%27den%209%20Maddede%20PISA%20De%C4%9Ferlendirmesi%20-%20161222.pdf Guven, İ.(2012). “The 4+4+4 School Reform Bill and the Fatih Project: Is it a Reform?” Elementary Education Online, 11(3): 556–577. Şimsek, H. (2015). Yeni Toplumculuk ve Yeni Toplumcu Eğitim. Ankara: İmge. Nir, A., Kondakçı, Y. & Emil, S. (Upcoming, 2017). Travelling policies and contextual considerations: On threshold criteria. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. DOI: 10.1080/03057925.2017.1281102.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.