THE REFORM OF PRE-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION IN TURKEY
(in Ronald G. Sultana (ed.), Challenge and Change in the Euro-Mediterranean
Region: Case Studies in Educational Innovation, New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2001,
pp. 411-432)
Hasan Simsek
Ali Yildirim
Middle East Technical University
Ankara, Turkey
Abstract
The Turkish Higher Education Council has recently restructured the initial teacher
education. Drastic shortages of teachers especially in the areas of elementary and preschool education triggered this major overhaul in teacher education in Turkey. Then,
the reform acts spreaded to the areas of curriculum, departmental structure of the
teacher training institutions, school-university partnership. This paper presents the
main tenets of this restructuring by particularly focusing on the conditions and issues
that sparked the move, main areas of pre-service teacher education where the change
efforts are concentrated, issues of implementation and expectations for the future.
Introduction
Observers of the world educational systems would quickly acknowledge that the
1990s are the years of restructuring and reformation of educational systems in many
respects. Such popular figures of world’s political scene as Bill Clinton and Tony
Blair have long ago declared education as the most pressing and demanding policy
areas among their national priorities. Of many variants of educational issues and
challenges, teacher education seems to be one of the reform items that cut across
many layers and details of educational issues. Nations are aware of the importance of
education of future generations that may no way come through without paying
attention to the education of educators. In this paper, we will attempt to draw a picture
of a recent initial teacher training reform in Turkey with such details as its antecedent
conditions and issues, the socio-political context and content of the reform initiative
and expectations as well as concerns for the future. In doing so, we will also consider
and report some major reform initiatives on initial teacher training in some other
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countries in an attempt to find some common patterns (if any) of reform policies
across these systems.
Initial Teacher Education Reforms in Some Countries
The reform initiatives that are going to be presented below should no way be expected
an exhaustive list of countries changing their ways of training teachers, rather it will
cover some national systems that would rather be taken as some exemplary national
cases at different levels of social and economical development: US, UK, France and
Australia.
To start with, there is an ongoing debate about the nature of initial teacher
training in the US. Although this debate dates far back, a 1996 report by the National
Commission on Teacher and America’s Future (NCTAF) sparked and intensified the
debate on teacher training. What NCTAF did in this report entitled “What Matters the
Most: Teaching for America’s Future” is to put forward a policy outline to strengthen
the teaching profession in the US.
That report offered a set of prescriptions to enhance the quality of
teachers and to strengthen teacher education. They included extending
programs to five-years, relying on professional development schools for
clinical experiences, using internships for beginning teachers, requiring
teachers to have an academic major, relying on licensure examinations
for new teachers and urging experienced teachers to earn certificates of
advanced practice (Imig, 1998, p. 1).
In addition, the same organization published a follow up report (Doing What Matters
Most: Investing in Quality Teaching) where they devised some strategies and policy
briefs. In a nutshell, the philosophy embedded in both of these policy outlines is
interpreted as the “professionalization agenda” that calls for high quality preservice
preparation and continuous professional development for all school personnel,
autonomous
professional
standards
boards,
advanced
teacher
certification,
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strengthened professional accreditation and empowered teachers, professional
development schools and new forms of assessment of both students and teachers
(Imig, 1998, p. 2)
Although these initiatives and reports received attention and subsequent policy
efforts from the government, it also created an unexpected conservative backlash. The
resistance movement have become critical of the NCTAF’s stance on teacher
education and drafted alternative proposals as such that “a) deregulate schools in
terms of who is hired to teach, b) set minimum hiring standards for teachers, c) focus
on content knowledge, not on pedagogy, and d) oppose the ‘private cartel of
organizations’ put forward in the NCTAF report” (Imig, 1998, p. 3). Following, the
resistance movement directed its attention to universities and teacher training
institutions’ monopoly on teacher training. Rather they proposed that the teaching
profession should be opened up to talented individuals who have the mastery of
subject they intend to teach, and training of teachers should be available in any
program that has the capacity to train teachers, not just schools of education (Imig,
1998, p. 4). This debate still continues, and, these and other innovative ideas and
proposals are continuously proposed and implemented locally, thanks to the
decentralized nature of the US education which hardly connotes any unified national
education system of the continental Europe and the rest of the world.
This centralization-decentralization debate has taken a rather different route in
the UK. The UK teacher training scheme was made highly centralized with the
conservative and neo-liberal government’s occupation of power since the early 1980s.
Wilkin reports that the centralization movement was started with a rather
unpredictable initiative of the government in 1984 that called for government control
of teacher training curriculum (Wilkin, 1999, p. 7).
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The conditions that allowed for greater government intervention were the lack
of a uniform training because of various historical, cultural and regional differences
among the teacher training institutions, variation in the curriculum of training,
variation in the intellectual and professional standards achieved by the students. As a
result, “expressed in the terms of the market, the quality of the product, the students,
has been unreliable” (Wilkin, 1999, p. 4). Since then, the British government has
established a tight control over the teacher training system in England in such a way
that it controls admission to institutions, training curriculum, length of training,
relations with partnership schools and graduation standards (Wilkin, 1999, p. 3).
Similarly, France initiated a reform act of teacher training in 1989 in response
to the difficulty of attracting new blood to the teaching profession to replace the
retiring teachers and cope with increasing numbers of pupils (Bonnet, 1996, p. 251).
The provisions of this reform act were mainly focused on providing equal standards
of academic and professional standards for both primary and secondary school
teachers, decentralizing the training system through 28 educational regions, but at the
same time increasing the government’s role in admission and program standards,
accreditation, deemphasizing the pure academic preparation in teacher training by
strengthening the school practice and empowering the education ministry in setting
national guidelines and monitoring the system (Bonnet, 1996, pp. 251-265).
Australia also is in the process of reforming her teacher training system. The
reform was started with the initiation of two sister projects: The National School
Network and Innovative Links. The former project is mainly about schools in that the
aim is to create a professional and research culture in schools through which teacher
professional development would be strengthened. Innovative links, on the other hand,
emphasize partnerships between schools and universities. These two projects have
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become a base for a third project named the National Standards and Guidelines for
Initial Teacher Education which was launched in 1998. The project aims to reverse
declining entry standards to the profession, quality concerns of the teacher training
programs, and weak school practice which is because of academic orientation in
teacher training programs.
Because of space limitations, we are not able to present other cases of reform
in teacher training which, overall, show similarities in terms of rationale,
implementation and future policy orientations. Several common patterns can be drawn
from the reform acts in these quite different national systems.
1. Control: In all teacher training systems that go through varying degrees of reform,
one thing becomes clear that there is an intense tug of war on who should control the
system. In many countries, central organs have gained a greater control over the
teacher training system in terms of setting entry, process and outcome standards for
the teaching profession. The relatively autonomous teacher training institutions of the
past now feel greater control of central authorities and this, of course, creates a
tension between the providers of teachers and employing governmental authorities.
For example, public monies provided to teacher training institutions by the
governments has become an efficient tool for the central education authorities to
control these institutions either directly or indirectly.
2. Theory/practice: Stating differently, this is the matter of subject knowledge versus
pedagogy in teacher training programs. Many of the national reform acts have similar
tones in this respect. In many cases, pre-reform training activities largely emphasized
theory which eventually led to the dominance of the providers without much regard to
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the realities of teaching in real school settings. We now observe a rather strong
emphasis on school practice that eventually foresees stronger ties between schools
and teacher training institutions. In this sense, partnership is a buzzword everywhere.
3. Quality: It seems that the quality concerns once became a fashion in industry
starting from the mid-1980s have created some reflections in all domains of education
including teacher training. Many of the reform initiatives have now developed
measures to enhance quality in input, throughput and output factors.
4. Quantity: Observers of reform acts would quickly recognize that behind many of
the reform movements, there are some quantitative data which indicate a serious
mismatch between number of teachers entering to the profession and the number of
pupils entering into the school system. In some national systems, this tangible
indicator alone triggers the reform which later spreads to other domains of teacher
training.
5. Length of Training: There is also another tangible indicator of change in initial
teacher training in terms of length of training before entering the profession. The
professionalization agenda in the US and reforms in UK, France, Australia and other
not-mentioned systems such as China and Brazil (Li, 1999; Ludke and Moreira, 1999)
propose an extended duration of initial teacher training. In some systems, formerly
two-year primary teacher training programs have been extended to three years, in
some, even to four-year academic degrees, whereas subject matter teacher training
programs have been extended to graduate degrees over an undergraduate degree in the
subject area. In many US and UK institutions, subject area teaching has long been a
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postgraduate degree, and some professional organizations in the US speak of 5 year
teacher training for all school levels.
Teacher Training System in Turkey: A Short History
A close look at the teacher training in Turkey reveals that significant restructuring
efforts have been undertaken in teacher training institutions in order to provide
sufficient and quality teachers for the nation's primary and secondary schools. Most
of these efforts appear to have focused on training primary school teachers since
primary education has traditionally been perceived as the most significant tool in
increasing the education level of the people in the country. Student acceptance,
length of training, curriculum and control of the institutions have been the major areas
of restructuring in these reform movements.
In 1970, the length of education was extended to four years in three-year
Primary Teacher Training Schools, and to seven years in six-year Primary Teacher
Training Schools.
Addition of another year allowed these schools to cover the
curriculum of general high schools providing academic education to students who
planned to receive university education, and to offer new courses and allocate more
time for teaching practice.
In 1973, the Turkish Parliament passed the Basic Law for National Education
increasing the duration of compulsory basic education from five to eight years in
Turkey. The law also required that teachers for basic education should be trained at
the university level. With this law, Primary Teacher Training Schools lost their
original function in teacher training. In 1975, some of these schools were closed
down, and others were transformed into two-year Teacher Training Institutes offering
education at the university level. Until 1982, these institutes training primary teachers
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were governed by the Turkish Ministry of National Education. In 1982, two-year
Educational Institutes were converted into two-year Higher Schools of Education and
became part of the university system. In 1989, these schools were reorganized under
Faculties of Education as Classroom Teaching Departments, and the length of
education was increased from two to four years.
Training sufficient number of primary teachers for the nation's primary
schools has always been one of the significant challenges of teacher training
institutions. This challenge became more serious during the 1990s. The gap between
the number of teachers trained and the number of teachers needed in schools
increased sharply over the years. Some of this need was fulfilled through alternative
routes, that is, graduates of certain undergraduate programs were hired as primary
school teachers, an action which has been seriously questioned by many. With the
full reinforcement of the Basic Education Law in 1997, compulsory education was
extended to eight years nationwide adding further pressure on teacher training
because of newly added classroom in schools. This also became a source of pressure
for universities to increase their capacity to train more primary teachers.
Training subject area teachers for both upper primary (grades 6-8) and high
schools (grades 9-11) was the responsibility of both the MOE and the universities
until 1982.
With the Higher Education Law in 1982, universities became fully
responsible for subject area teacher training. Before 1982, there were two major
sources of subject area teachers: Education Institutes governed by the Ministry of
Education, and Faculties of Arts and Sciences of the universities.
In the early years of the Republic, there was no institution training subject area
teachers specifically for upper primary level. In 1926, a two-year institution (Gazi
Education Institute) was established in Ankara to meet this need. Toward the end of
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1940s, three more education institutes housing two and three year programs for all
upper primary subject areas (Turkish, Social Studies, Science and Mathematics) were
founded in three other major cities of Turkey. Since the students who wished to
continue their education after basic education (grades 1-5) increased sharply in the
1960s, more upper primary schools were established in many locations in the country,
and as a result, the number of these institutes increased to 10 during these years, and
to 18 in the 1970s. In 1979, some of these institutes changed their structure of
programs to specialize in subject matter areas of high schools (e.g., Biology, Physics),
and increased the length of education to four years. Students who were trained in
these specialized areas were unfit for upper primary school teaching which tends to
integrate subject areas (e.g., sciences).
In 1982, with the restructuring in higher education, all these institutes were
transformed into four year Faculties of Education training teachers in specialized
subject areas, and placed under the umbrella of the university system. From this year
on, training teachers specifically for upper primary level was ignored, all faculties
focused mainly on training teachers for high school subject areas. Not being able to
hire teachers specifically trained for upper primary level, the MOE was forced to
appoint some of the teachers trained in high school subject areas to upper primary
schools.
Since these teachers were not quite right for upper primary schools'
integrated curriculum, the quality of education suffered deeply.
Until 1982, training teachers for high school level was mainly the
responsibility of Faculties of Arts and Sciences of universities and four-year Higher
Teacher Schools governed by the MOE. In addition, in times of need, the graduates
of Education Institutes were also hired in high schools, as some graduates of Faculties
of Arts and Sciences and Higher Teacher Schools were hired as upper primary school
9
teachers.
Higher Teacher Schools were closed down in 1978 since four year
Education Institutes started training high school teachers.
After the transfer of all teacher training institutions of the MOE to the
university system, teacher training has gained more theoretical aspects and ignored
practical training in schools. This was partly due to the academic orientation of the
universities and to the lack of collaboration and communication between the
universities and the MOE toward training of teachers. Since training teachers for high
schools was perceived as more prestigious, upper-primary teacher training was
ignored, as a result the MOE was forced to use alternative routes for hiring teachers
especially for this level. Graduates of various programs in the universities were hired
after a short period of training either in the MOE or at the Faculties of Education.
Pre-reform Anomalies of the Turkish Teacher Training System1
Here we will shortly describe the issues and conditions in the mid-1990s that led to
the reform of teacher training system in Turkey. We tried to organize these issues
under several titles.
1. Academic orientation: Previously mentioned 1982 reform of higher education in
Turkey had major impacts on teacher training. As part of a unified higher education
move, teacher training institutions in various kinds, length and regions were
reorganized under universities. By this, teacher training became a two or four year
university degree. This, no doubt, contributed more to the enhancement of teaching
profession in terms of increasing academic quality. However, over the years, some of
the founding principles of teacher training came up rather strongly than others.
This part is based on a report by the Higher Education Council entitled “Reorganization of the
Teacher Training Programs of Faculties of Education” (1998, pp. 14-19)
1
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Teacher training institutions now under the umbrella of universities interpreted their
role as pure science and research, and simply pushed teacher training to the
background of their missions. Especially the large and old teacher training institutions
preferred training of subject area teachers for the high school level which has
traditionally been seen as more prestigious activity than say training of primary school
teachers. Moreover, some of them created departments under the name of
“educational sciences” that offered undergraduate training in areas that should be
offered at the graduate level, like educational administration, curriculum
development, measurement and evaluation and adult education. Unfortunately, these
areas of undergraduate training had no real connection to the market or the demands
of the largest employer, the Ministry of Education. Majority of these graduates simply
being unemployed then pursued teaching certificates to be appointed as classroom
teachers. As a result of this pure academic orientation and ignorance of the real needs
of the schools in the mid 1990s the Ministry declared severe shortages in several
teaching areas like primary, pre-school, science, Turkish and English. Interestingly,
there was also an oversupply of teachers in several subject areas such as Math,
Chemistry, Physics, Biology.
2. Duplication of efforts and lack of collaboration: Teacher training requires a
strong collaboration between Faculties of Education and Faculties of Arts and
Sciences especially in campus universities. This is because of the fact that subject
knowledge relevant for a particular teaching area can be best delivered by experts
residing in the Faculties of Arts and Sciences. On the contrary, Faculties of Education
staffed large number of teaching staff specialized in the “pure knowledge” side of the
profession, people who are experts in Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc. Devoid
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of a strong collaboration between these two academic units, Faculties of Education
have become equivalent of the faculties of arts and sciences in certain areas over the
years. Staff members in Faculties of Education started demanding expensive research
equipment and labs for teaching and research which was a clear sign of duplication in
terms of teaching, research activities and physical infrastructure.
3. False academic norms: Because of the developments mentioned above, especially
the young generations of academic staff were being socialized in an environment that
values knowledge side of the profession. This led to the weakening of professional
side of teaching that is more aligned with pedagogy and teaching methodologies. As a
result, there are now few people in Faculties of Education who are specialized in
teaching methods in almost all fields.
4. Organizational mismatch: Organizationally speaking, pre-reform period
associated with a duality of organizational structure in teacher training system in
Turkey. Namely, provider and employer of teachers were placed under different
organizational units whose missions and orientations are somewhat conflicting. The
major employer of teachers is the Ministry of Education while the sole provider was
Faculties of Education that are functional units of universities and universities being
responsible to the Higher Education Council (HEC). These two public organs did not
achieve a satisfactory level of coordination especially in teacher training. Overtime,
the providers (Faculties of Education) became detached from and distant to the
employer (Ministry of Education). This isolation was later reflected in undersupply
and oversupply of teachers in many areas.
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5. Inadequate school experience: Related with aforementioned issue, there has never
been satisfactory collaboration between the faculties of education and schools.
Faculties themselves had to deal with individual schools in arranging student teaching
practice. Because there were no tangible incentives for the schools to deliberately
engage in such a collaboration, they did not welcome practicing students into their
schools under the guise of many administrative, logistical and curricular reasons.
Largely being both cause and end itself, this has led to the underemphasis of school
experience in favor of theoretical teaching in the faculties of education.
6. Degraded teaching certificates: Largely because of the problems stated above, for
many years the Ministry of Education has been employing people as teachers who had
completed short cycle of certificate courses. Because of high demand, primary, preschool, and English teaching have constituted the major areas of these appointees.
However, teaching certificate courses proved highly degraded owing to several
reasons. First, the amount of practice was reduced to minimum, in some cases to
none, because of the limited length of the program. Second, certificate courses were
seen by Faculties of Education and staff members as mere sources of easy money and
extra earning. It created a mindless competition among the teacher training
institutions which became a source of exploitation of students. In some instances, this
competition got out of control and some certificate programs accepted students whose
undergraduate degrees were not recognized by the Ministry to be eligible for
employment in schools (such as students with undergraduate degrees from the
Faculties of Agriculture or from Open University). Third, length and content of the
certificate courses showed variety from institution to institution and most of these
courses were found to be very of low quality. Fourth, this route to teaching which was
13
initially thought to be an emergency measure later became the rule by which all
university graduates assumed to be teachers if they did not find a satisfying job in
their own field.
7. Extension of basic education to 8 years: Full enforcement of eight year
compulsory education was initiated in 1997, and this created an extra pressure on the
Ministry to find enough number of full-time teachers for newly added classrooms in
the school system. This development was very timely in terms of solidifying the
reasons behind the restructuring of the teacher training system according to the need
of the nation’s schools and speeding up the reform process. This coincidence created
the very conditions for the government’s strong and further support of the reform
initiatives for initial teacher training.
New Teacher Training System: Some Details
In this part, we will attempt to give the reader a brief overview of the teacher training
system. This discussion should no way be taken as a full treatment of the provisions
of the reform, neither should the following list of titles be seen as an exhaustive list of
details of the reform owing to the richness and depth of the changes for a relatively
large national education system.
From Loose to Tight-Coupling or From Differentiation to Integration: Prereform institutions of teacher training can be resembled more to a differentiated
organizational structure where there were numerous departments somewhat
duplicating each other: Department of Math education, department of Biology
education, department of Physics education, department of music education,
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department of arts education, department of hearing impaired, department of gifted
and talented education, etc.
The root of this extremely specialized and loose structure can be found in
relatively old academic culture of disciplinary orientation. Small cadre of
academicians with similar disciplinary backgrounds formed new departments and
programs which later became little fiefdoms in Faculties of Education like molecular
biology education, solid physics. These names also point to the fact that profile and
background of the teaching staff in the Faculties were not totally consistent with the
overall mission of these institutions.
The reform sought a major restructuring in the organization of faculties. Some
of the departments and programs (especially the ones named above) were closed, still
some others were merged under an umbrella name, and some formerly nonexisting
ones were also created such as computer and instructional technology. One of the
rationale behind this restructuring was to create a structure that resembles the school
system: Department of Primary Education involving such programs as classroom
teaching, primary science education, primary math education and primary social
studies education that mainly serve the grades 1-8 in the school system. Department
of Foreign Languages involving such programs as English language education,
French language education, German language education; Department of Fine Arts
Education involving such programs as music education and arts education, etc. As can
be seen, many of the departments in the previous system were being made programs
under an allied umbrella name. The purpose here was to create a lean organizational
structure which would yield to a more rational distribution of human and other
resources as well as to a more collaborative and interdisciplinary organizational
culture.
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From Subject Knowledge Emphasis to Pedagogy and Professionalization 2: The
previous pure academic orientation in the teacher training curriculum across many
subject areas emphasized heavily specialized subject matter content and theoretical
educational sciences, and ignored the professional and practice-oriented nature of the
teaching. The curriculum in the same subject area differed greatly in different
Faculties of Education since the curriculum was mostly shaped by the academic
orientation of the staff in the faculties. So, there was no standardization in terms of
the number of courses, content and organization of these courses, credit hours, and
school experience time.
The courses in the curriculum were designed without
considering the school level the prospective teachers would teach.
Since the
theoretical aspects of the subject areas were emphasized more, teaching methods in
these subject areas were given little attention. In fact it was assumed that if one
knows the subject area content well, one can teach it effectively. The pedagogical
courses which supposedly aimed to prepare students for the teaching profession
emphasized heavily the theoretical educational sciences, but did not include activities
to help students put them into practice. In summary, there was an outcry in many
faculties and the MOE for the development of a new curriculum based on recent
developments in the field and the needs of schools for quality teachers.
Toward this purpose, the Higher Education Council initiated a major
curriculum development project in all areas of teacher training.
Curriculum
development committees involving subject area experts, educational scientists,
curriculum development specialists and subject area teachers were formed. These
committees worked an intensive schedule reviewing curricula from various countries,
2
This part is based on a curriculum document published by the Higher Education Council entitled
“Undergraduate Teacher Training Programs of Faculties of Education” (1998)
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checking research on teacher education, assessing the previous courses and related
activities, and considering the actual needs of teaching in respective areas. Problems
of previous curricula were explained to these committees, and they were asked to pay
special attention to new developments in the field of teacher training and the MOE
curriculum currently used in schools.
Since most of these committees worked
concurrently in the same location, they were able to exchange perspective and check
their progress in relation to others. They also collaborated in preparation of minor
area curriculum for upper primary subject areas, and some other subject areas. At the
end, a total of 16 curricula were developed by these committees and they were
communicated to Faculties of Education and to the MOE for review and feedback.
Based on the feedback received, revisions were done in the curricula, and their final
shape was given.
As a result, the curriculum of the teacher training programs was brought in
line with the respective characteristics of the curriculum taught in schools, the
teaching and learning process and the student group.
Pedagogical courses of
theoretical nature of the previous curriculum were redesigned to provide both
theoretical perspective and practical skills to student teachers. First of all, the number
of these courses was increased from 7 to 12 to allow more time for developing various
aspects of the teaching profession (e.g., curriculum, teaching. assessment, classroom
management, technology, guidance). Most pedagogical courses required students to
have school experience in relation to the content covered. School experience was
initiated in the first year of the program to allow students to understand and discuss
the realities of teaching and prepare themselves consciously for this challenging
profession. In addition, the total amount of time for school experience and actual
teaching practice was increased drastically to prepare student teachers within practice.
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In some programs, minor areas were included, and related courses were placed
in the curriculum. For example, for Social Studies, Turkish became a minor, and vice
versa. The purpose was to teach teachers with a second major so that they would be
able to teach a second subject area in case of teacher shortage, which is a common
situation in many parts of the country particularly at the upper primary level.
From Four-Year to Postgraduate (in some fields):
In addition to four year
programs for training lower and upper primary teachers, high school subject area
teacher training programs were redesigned as well. Within the new structure, students
who graduate from Faculties of Arts and Sciences and other related faculties should
attend a 1,5 year master's program at the faculty of Education to receive professional
training for teaching. This program included mainly pedagogical courses providing
training in various aspects of the teaching profession like basic educational concepts,
student psychology, curriculum, teaching, technology, management, guidance, and
preparing students with a lot of school experience and teaching practice.
Instructional Materials and Equipment: Of course, no new curriculum would be
effective without good teaching and learning materials. Especially in the area of
subject matter teaching methodology, new materials were urgently needed since there
were not many instructors in the country specifically trained in this area. Thanks to
Higher Education Council's initiation of a major material development effort through
a World Bank funded education project in 1995, various panels were established to
develop source books of teaching methods in 16 different subject areas. These panels
included consultant from overseas, academicians from the Faculties of Education, and
subject area teachers. These panels worked over two years to develop the source
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books.
After several pilot implementations and evaluations in selected faculties
around the country, they were revised and published. These source books were
introduced in seminars to representatives from all the Faculties of Education in 1997,
and were distributed in sufficient numbers to all. It is expected that these source
books would serve as examples and lead to development of other source books by the
instructors themselves in time.
In order to strenghten the technological infrastructure of Faculties of Education, six
million dollars out of 23 million dollars World Bank loan was used to purchase
various kinds of instructional equipment including computer labs, subject teaching lab
equipment, overhead projectors, TV and VCRs, etc. These equipment have already
been set up for functional use in the Faculties of Education, and the staff went through
an intensive training program on the use of these equipment. The purchase of
equipment and many teaching methods textbooks in various subject areas for all
faculties is hoped to be helpful in the process of transformation from pure academic
orientation to more professional skills orientation in the teaching and learning process.
From Provider-Driven to Partnership: One of the significant aspects of the
restructuring teacher training was the emphasis placed on experience in school, and
the increased amount of time spared for classroom observations and real teaching
practices. As mentioned above, the previous graduates of the Faculties of Education
suffered deeply from the lack of practical training in schools, and that was shown
clearly in the reports of the MOE and various studies undertaken in this area. Of
course, such a move would require a close partnership between schools and the
Faculties of Education. For this purpose, a Faculty-School Partnership framework
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was developed (Preservice Teacher Education Project, 1998), and this framework was
introduced to the personnel in Faculties of Education, MOE officials, provincial
directorates of education and administrative staff in schools around the country. This
program focused specifically on how the partnership will function, roles and
responsibilities of participating people (school coordinators, mentor teachers,
instructors, faculty coordinators, etc.), and how student teachers make their way into
real teaching experiences and professional development in the school environment.
Another important development in this area was the preparation of an
agreement for university-school partnership by the MOE, and making all schools
around the country available for practical training of student teachers (Ministry of
Education, 1998). This agreement was co-signed by the Minister of Education and
the president of Higher Education Council in 1998, and put into action immediately.
The agreement clearly outlined the roles and responsibilities of the universities and
schools in providing students with practical training in schools during their four year
undergraduate program or master's program. This agreement also called for payment
to the school coordinators and mentor teachers in return for the time and effort they
put into training of student teachers in schools. Later in 1999, the Higher Education
Council Executive Council passed a decision to regulate how the universities will pay
the coordinators and mentor teachers within the partnership system.
Within the current partnership program, schools receive student teachers in
their first year of training, four hours a week for one semester to provide them with
initial experiences in schools. Students try to understand how the schools function in
terms of administration and educational activities and get a sense of the school
through a prospective teacher's perspective. In the second and third years of the
teacher training program, student teachers visit the schools as part of various
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educational courses (e.g., instructional planning and evaluation, classroom
management, teaching methods, educational technology and instructional material
preparation) with an intent to apply and assess what they learn in these courses in the
real school context with experienced teachers. In the first semester of the final year of
teacher training program, student teachers visit the schools 4-8 hours a week again to
apply various concepts and techniques they acquired educational courses and to do
small scale teaching. In the final semester they actually spend 12 hours a week,
which is more than half of the regular teaching load of a full-time teacher.
In
summary, the partnership forged between the universities and schools within the
restructuring of the teacher training system allowed a good deal of time for student
teachers to spend in schools and develop their professional teaching skills and
insights. Without a strong partnership like this, such a load of practical training
would not have possibly been actualized.
From Pure Autonomy to National Standards and Accreditation: The 1981 higher
education reform in Turkey created a central organ, the Higher Education Council, to
oversee the higher education sector overall. Despite this regulation effort of the higher
education, Higher Education Council has always met a great suspicion from some
academicians and the public since it was blamed to be a threat to academic freedom. It
was partly because of that one of its founding principles was to regulate the
universities which was largely defined by an old academic oligarchy culture resisting
any kind of interference by any authority (Simsek, forthcoming). Since then,
politicians and governments have always been hesitant in dealing with this institution
and some of them even misused its existence in order to deliver populist messages to
the public that they are sided with absolute freedom in universities in terms of both
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curriculum and governance. Over time, it has turned into a bureaucratic institution.
Because of these reasons, Higher Education Council has never been a strong and
powerful regulating body as it seems from the outset.
This has had important reflections on universities as well as on teacher
training institutions in terms of creating a loose culture of diverse and somewhat
conflicting directions. As a result, pre-reform teacher training activities varied a great
extent from region to region, from institution to institution and from program to
program.
The reform has sought to solve this problem by developing an accreditation
and standards mechanism through which regional, institutional and program-related
differences are supposed to be negotiated based on some national quality standards.
Although there are some technical and theoretical issues associated with this idea such
as how reasonable or feasible to accredit an institution or program which is mandated
by law to involve in a particular public activity say training teachers and what would
be possible consequences of performing below the standards, the idea is very
innovative and progressive that, in the long run, would be extended to other areas of
higher education.
In order to have the provisions of reform proceed as planned, a need emerged
for a central body to oversee the teacher education system and the implementation of
reform. For this, the National Committee on Teacher Education was formed in 1998
under the Higher Education Council. This new organ involves representatives from
the faculties of education, the Higher Education Council and the ministry of
education.
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Fellowship Training: The Higher Education Council declared that Turkish
universities face the problem of critical shortage of qualified teaching staff in various
fields including education (Simsek, forthcoming). First, because of the previously
stated demand by the Ministry of Education for teachers in some critical areas of
primary and secondary education, new faculties have been opened in various regions
of the country and new programs have been offered in relatively older institutions.
This has further exacerbated the problem of faculty shortage. Second, in established
faculties, although positions seem to be filled, the background and professional
qualifications of these teaching staff do not adequately respond to the needs of the
Faculties of Education. As we previously mentioned under “false academic norms,”
great majority of these instructors come from the “pure science and research
orientation” that make them inadequate on teaching methodology in their subject
areas.
In order to remedy the problem of teaching staff in both quality and quantity,
the Higher Education Council has sent abroad about 85 master’s and doctoral students
in fields of subject, classroom and pre-school teaching. Most of these students are
about to complete their degrees and some of them have already started teaching in
their home faculties.
In addition, there are some long-term strategies that are put in effect as well.
The Ministry of Education has about 1,000 scholarship quota for oversees education
every year. Up to now, however, these scholarship opportunities have been used for
training of people in other fields such as engineering, management, agriculture, etc.
For the first time, 750 scholarships are completely spared for teacher education this
year through a joint agreement of the Ministry of Education and the Higher Education
Council. This measure will have long-term consequences on the problem, in the
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meantime, the Higher Education Council has recently activated a long-standing policy
of allowing research assistants of the newly founded or less developed faculties to
receive graduate degrees from older and well-established faculties.
Conclusions and Future Expectations
The new structure and programs in teacher training was put into practice in the 199899 academic year.
We are in the first year of the implementation of the new
programs, and the Faculties of Education are surely experiencing certain difficulties in
adapting to the changes the restructuring brought. The restructuring requires the
Faculties of Education to change their way of functioning in terms of allocation of
courses to instructors, collaboration with schools and Faculties of Arts and Sciences,
close contact with other Faculties of Education, and continuous professional
improvement in the field of teaching and learning methodology in the subject areas.
Of course, these are serious challenges for the Faculties of Education which
traditionally highlighted mostly the pure subject matter knowledge of the teaching
profession, therefore did not place too much attention on methodology, school
practice and collaboration with schools and various other institutions. The Higher
Education Council asked the university administrations to provide full support to the
Faculties of Education during the initial implementation phase.
The restructuring of teacher training in Turkey seems to be influenced some of
the basic tenets of reform movements in teacher education around the world. First of
all, higher level of control appears to be a major orientation the current restructuring
movement. Teacher training programs are brought in line with the needs of the
market through a major reorganization at the upper levels of the system. This topdown approach was forced by the inefficiencies and misguided orientations of the
24
university system in adapting itself to the new challenges of the teaching profession.
This approach, of course, creates a tension between the Faculties of Education and the
Higher Education Council as a central authority.
A second major orientation of the restructuring is toward more practice in
teacher training, which is one of the key points of reform in many other teacher
training systems around the world.
The realities of the school system, and the
practical skills of teachers seem to be guiding where the teacher training is heading in
Turkey as well.
Quality is a major issue in the current restructuring efforts. Better selection of
students, effective training process and assessment of the output have become the
major concepts in training teachers. Extension of high school subject area teacher
training to master’s level (a total of 5 or 5.5 years), bringing some contemporary
aspects into the new curriculum and involvement of schools in the training process are
some of the major steps to assure the quality of prospective teachers.
Quantity is always a major force influencing the directions in teacher
education. Shortage of teachers in certain areas of teaching seems to be shaping the
programs in teacher training and forces the staff to explore new areas of teaching in
line with the quantitative needs of the system. For example, some staff will need to
change their professional focus from purely subject matter teaching to teaching
methodology, and others will look into subject area teaching in terms of different
levels of schools.
The essential needs of the educational system in terms of both quality and
quantity and new developments in teacher training field have led to this reform in
Turkish teacher training system, and we are only in the initial stages of
implementation of this major overhaul. It is expected that the new system will be
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effectively in place in a few years time with the return of trainees (master’s and
doctoral level) from abroad, the full functioning of the new equipment (computers,
overhead projectors, etc.) and use of the teaching and learning materials developed,
and the full adaptation to the new curriculum emphasizing teaching methodology and
school practice. Of course no reform is an end in itself, the teacher training system
needs continuous assessment in the light of the essential needs of schools and theory
and research in the field.
References
Bonnet, G. (1996). The Reform of Initial Teacher Training in France, Journal of
Education for Teaching, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 249-270.
Higher Education Council (1998). Reorganization of Teacher Training Programs of
Faculties of Education, Ankara, Turkey.
Higher Education Council (1998). Undergraduate Teacher Training Programs of
Faculties of Education, Ankara, Turkey.
Imig, D. (1998). An Environmental Scan of Current Trends in Teacher Education in
the United States, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education
(AACTE), Washington, D.C.
Li, D. (1999). Modernization and Teacher Education in China, Teaching and Teacher
Education, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 179-192.
Ludke, M. and A.F.B Moreira (1999). Recent Proposals to Reform Teacher Education
in Brazil, Teaching and Teacher Education, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 169-178.
Ministry of Education (1998). Faculty-School Partnership. Ankara, Turkey.
Preservice Teacher Education Project (1998). Faculty of Education-School
Partnership. Ankara, Turkey
Simsek, H. (forthcoming). The Turkish Higher Education System in the 1990s,
Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies (a special issue on higher
education systems in the Mediterranean).
Wilkin, M. (1999). The Role of Higher Education in Initial Teacher Education,
Universities Council for the Education of Teachers, Occasional Paper No.
12, London.
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