Assessment of New Turkish Curriculum for Grade 1 to 5

Abstract

The level of education in Turkey couldn’t achieve the goals set in the curriculum according to many national and international researches. As a result, the Ministry of National Education started a reform action in primary curriculum in 2004. The Turkish curriculum for Grade 1 to 5 is redeveloped considering social constructivist theory of education. New curriculum was piloted in 2004-2005 school year and put into practice nationwide in 2005-2006 school year. The purpose of this study is to assess the qualities of new curriculum using Stake’s Countenance Model. This model requires the comparison of curriculum intents with performance and
standards. Curriculum intents were derived from the documents of the ministry, performance criteria was gathered depending on teachers’ perspectives and standards were studied in the literature. The results show that new curriculum and the performance indicators are concurrent to the criteria of a constructivist curriculum set in literature.