Teacher education is a highly-debated area in many countries. Whenever the quality of teaching and learning in schools becomes an issue, teacher education receives the largest share of criticism for the quality of teachers prepared for the schools. Teacher education has been the target of fierce criticism for the low quality of education in schools in the US since the much-publicized report, Nation at Risk, in the early 1980s, and later the Carnegie and Holmes Reports that led to the establishment of national teacher education commissions (such as National Commission on Teaching and America´s Future) in the 1990s (Yildirim, 2011). In Sweden, debates about teacher education quality have led to new initiatives to make schools and universities establish research and practice partnerships. Similar trends were observed in many other countries. For example, in the UK, teacher education was the hallmark of educational reform the Thatcher Government initiated in the late 1980s which brought a high level of control and accountability to the student acceptance to and the implementation of the programs. The criticism toward teacher education in France, Australia, and New Zealand during the 1990s and 2000s resulted in efforts to restructure teacher education programs that brought significant changes ranging from admission and duration of teacher education to assessment and certification (Yildirim, 2011).

Changes in teacher education are often controversial due to competing perspectives and priorities driven by different conceptions of good teaching and teacher education. More than four decades ago, Spodek (1974) argued that teacher education is closely related to the ideologies of the time. Later Zeichner (1983) emphasized that any restructuring in teacher education reflected a certain philosophical orientation, and described these perspectives through four teacher education paradigms: (1) “behavioristic paradigm” that is based on positivistic philosophy and behaviorist psychology has traditionally been the most influential orientation in teacher education resulting in the emphasis on specific and observable competencies in teacher education, (2) “personalistic paradigm” emphasizing individual growth based on self-awareness and personal experiences rather than standard principles and competencies and requires an open and flexible approach to teacher education content and processes in line with teacher candidates´ personality and needs, (3) “traditional craft paradigm” viewing teacher education as a process of apprenticeship where a student teacher works with an experienced teacher as “master” to develop the skills and conception of good teaching, (4) “inquiry paradigm” highlighting the importance of observing, questioning, reasoning, researching to assess and improve teaching skills, and competencies.

Primary teacher education in Turkey has experienced four large-scale curricular changes in the last 30 years in the structure of the curriculum and the course contents. Although the keyword behind these changes has always been “quality,” the new curriculum swung between theory and practice as well as content and pedagogy. The purposes and priorities of these changes often represent different educational agendas and perspectives even though they are mostly implicit. We think it is critical to identify and describe these underlying approaches to understand these changes and assess their potential impact on teacher education processes and future teachers for schools.  Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the orientations that implicitly or explicitly have shaped the four curricular changes in teacher education programs in Turkey from 1989 to 2018.

Two research questions guided our data collection and analysis: (1) What are the key areas the curricular changes focused on in primary teacher education in Turkey? (2) What teacher education orientations characterize the curricular changes in primary teacher education in Turkey? 

This study is based on interpretive document analysis, aimed at revealing implicit assumptions behind the key areas of four large-scale changes that took place in primary teacher education in Turkey between 1989 and 2018. These changes were analyzed through the framework of teacher education paradigms drawn by Zeichner (1983). As an emergent methodology (Altheide, Coyle, DeVriese, & Schneider, 2008), qualitative document analysis involves a systematic review or evaluation of both printed and electronic materials. The analysis entails skimming, reading, and interpreting the data in documents (Bowen, 2009). While document analysis mostly serves as a complement to other research methods, it is also a stand-alone method to interpret the phenomena reflected in descriptions, issues, principles, and other types of text addressed by documents around a set of concepts. The data sources included teacher education curriculum established by the Higher Education Council (HEC) and implemented by the faculties of education as a standard set of courses, and teacher education reports prepared by the HEC, Ministry of National Education, faculties of education, and other organizations in reference to the curriculum changes. In addition, research studies that focused specifically on these curriculum changes in the form of articles, papers, and reports were also included. These documents were identified through databases (Academic Search Complete, Book Index with Reviews, ERIC, Humanities International Complete, and ULAKBİM National Databases). “Teacher training” and “teacher education” were used as search terms with a Boolean term, “and.” In addition, a search was also done for theses and dissertations on teacher training and teacher education. For this reason, theses and dissertations provided by the National Theses Center of the HEC were reviewed. Of all, those relevant for analysis and restructuring of primary teacher education programs were included in the study. We used a content analysis approach to organize and conceptualize the data in these documents (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Patton, 2002; Yildirim & Şimşek, 2018) through the analytical framework of teacher education paradigms established in the theoretical discussion. We have used two coding schemes in analyzing the data: The first focused on the key areas of changes such as content focus, theory-practice balance, course sequence, school practice, graduation requirements, and research emphasis. The second involved interpretive coding in relation to the four paradigms presented above to conceptualize the orientations in each curricular change in primary teacher education.

The preliminary findings indicate that in the late 1980s, the primary teacher education curriculum concentrated on content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical knowledge (PK), but ignored pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) courses. The curricular change in the mid-1990s involved early and continuous school practice courses, practice hours integrated into PK courses, and the introduction of PCK courses, making teacher education more practice-oriented. The change in the mid-2000s focused on academic disciplines, reducing school practice courses and practical hours of PK courses, and increasing the number of conceptual PK and general culture knowledge (GCK) courses. In the late 2010s, school practice was reduced further, and PCK courses were split into several small courses through a discipline-based organization. The interpretive coding of the primary teacher education curriculum based on Zeichner´s categorization was useful in characterizing the focus of the change even though each change involved various orientations with different levels of emphasis. On the other hand, it became necessary to include additional orientations during interpretive coding since some of the curricular changes called for more contextual codes such as “general culture orientation” and “academic orientation.” The preliminary findings of this analysis suggest that the first major change in teacher education programs in 1989 represented a “behaviorist and academic orientation”, while the one in 1997 was “inquiry and practice-oriented” (traditional craft). The subsequent changes in 2006 involved “general culture and academic orientation” and in 2018 a “fragmented academic orientation” respectively.

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