Turkish Curriculum: Claimed to be based on Constructism.

Abstract

One of the major reforms in the Turkish primary education curriculum took place in 2005 and 2006. This reform was intended to make major changes in the Turkish primary education curriculum in line with constructivism. The author argues that such initiative should have taken the Turkish primary curriculum as a whole rather than focusing on only the implementation phase. To support the argument, the mathematics course book of 2011-2012 instructional year at the 8th grade in the second half of primary education in Turkey, has been examined with a view to counting the number of new terms, new concepts and new processes which were introduced the first time and expected to be “learnt” by the students. Based upon the results of this paper, it is argued that the said reform failed to consider the learnability aspect of the content of primary school curriculum of the Turkish primary education curriculum. It is further argued that with such a huge scope of content, it seems almost implausible for the learner to reflect on the terms, concepts and processes included in the content as required by constructivism