Educational reform in Turkey

Abstract

There are a number of reform initiatives underway in Turkey but some of these, which are concerned with curricular and structural changes, have encountered serious difficulties. This paper begins with a brief summary of school effectiveness and school improvement research guiding many educational reforms. It then gives some information about school demographics in Turkey, and the country's performance in some international benchmarking studies. It continues with the shifts introduced as a result of recent curricular reorganisation in Turkey and, subsequently, with various issues related to their implications. Finally, the efforts to legislate some structural changes and the major controversies arising are presented. © 2006

The Tensions Between EFL Teacher Identities and INSET in the Turkish Context

“…For instance, Kırkgöz (2007) indicates the great effort of Turkish efl teachers to follow the trends in the constructivist approach, the sociocultural theory, and the communicative language teaching due to the Turkey's candidate status for the eu and further innovations. In spite of many educational and curricular reforms with the European Union accession process since 1997, continuous support is necessary for the stakeholders to sustain this success by balancing theory and practice, and the real and the ideal (Aksit, 2007).…”

An Examination of the Influence of International Large Scale Assessments and Global Learning Metrics on National School Reform Policies

“…1 Taken together, these ILSAs have been administered on variable schedules in almost every country around the globe, 2 with many national governments participating in more than one ILSA at a time 3 and more participating in ILSAs generally over the past two decades. 4 5 To obtain a more comprehensive and comparative understanding of student learning, organizations that administer ILSAs and other stakeholder organizations have started to explore a more ambitious goal of developing global learning metrics (GLMs) in relationship to existing ILSAs.…”

Structures and programme supports for Creativity, Action, Service in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme: An implementation study in Turkey

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