MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT
TITLE OF THE PAPER:
EDS416
Take Home Exam
Spring 2013
NAME & LASTNAME: ŞEYMA NUR ÖNAL
STUDENT ID: 1808492
SECTION: 08
INSTRUCTOR’S NAME: Dr. SERAP EMİL
SUBMISSION DATE: 14/04/2013
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Question 1 – Discuss the current status of Turkish education system.
a.
A citizen of a country has a lot to say about their system especially when the
education is the focus point. Education is rather a critical issue, because it affects a
person’s whole life and in the end, it forms the new generation. I don’t have much
knowledge about the other countries, but I know that my country, Turkey has a lot of
points to be criticized as in our country’s case, the political, historical events, the
thinking ways of the people who rule us always have had influenced and still effects
our education system. So, one problem in our education system could be the
unchangeable curriculum system both in K-12 and in Higher Education especially in
English Language Teaching. Our Turkish Education applies a system that a teacher or
a person who deals with education doesn’t have the chance to change the curriculum
according to his/her point of view. This situation may be not a big problem in most of
the fields such as mathematics, physics, etc. however, when we take English teaching
into account, there arises a big problem because the books the government prepares
and puts in the curriculum is of poor quality as they are prepared by just focusing on
the grammar. So, the English teaching systems is wrong from the very beginning and
no matter some of the teachers are alert and want to teach their own way, they just
can’t do it. There is a strict curriculum that is set, and all the things a teacher should do
is written with every detail making it impossible to have your classes with a different
book which may be more beneficial to the students’ learning the second language. At
Primary and High School for example, I had English teachers who used to give a lot of
effort to teach us in a better way and tried to convince our parents to buy another book,
but all of them were doing this in a secret way and as it was not allowed they were still
writing the things that the government wants to the class notebook which the inspectors
and the school management sometimes check. But, these teachers were just a minor
part, most of them were not taking risks and stopped producing ideas therefore lost
their creativeness and became machines which do nothing but teaching the same
things year after another resulting in children’s’ learning nothing. So, because of all
these reasons, I regard a consistent curriculum as a problem in our education system
which is really should be changed for a better, efficient education and for teacher’s
improvement of their fields. I dealt with the English Teaching aspect as it is my field,
but I believe the same problem occurs in every one of the areas of education.
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b. First of all, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has set the rules in which they are the ones
who are responsible for the curriculum and that it couldn’t be changed. So, from the
beginning there is the law. Also our country has a Five Year Development Plan which
includes every aspect of the ruling system such as economy, politics, education, etc.
The first Development Plan was written in 1963 valid for 5 years and now we are using
the 8th (ekutup, 2009). It says that a standard curriculum system is necessary for every
field of education as it is important for a teacher to know what they are going to teach
and how. Again it says that, one cannot expect from a teacher to remember all the
things s/he should teach throughout all the year (Ergün, M., 1995). So, we can
understand that there is no place for the teachers’ thought of his /her own style of
teaching. I also want to say that this system is opposed to Behavioral Science
Approach as according to it, the teachers can decide how they can teach and they can
cooperate with each other.
c. If I were the Minister of Education, firstly I would organize my administration
according to Behavioral Science Approach. Because the productivity of the teachers,
how efficient they are and how creative they are is important in a school as well their
thoughts, feelings, needs and the chance to communicate effectively with each other. I
would set the rules in a way that the managers and the employees can have a good
communication with each other so that they can interact easily, discuss about the
problems and try to find solutions together. Most importantly, I would set a curriculum
with having made a lot of research on it beforehand (observing different country’s
education systems, getting the ideas of other people around me, etc.), but which could
be changed after it goes under some procedures of course. For example, when a
teacher thinks that the book is not enough or not efficient in teaching English and wants
to use another book in which there are lots of authentic materials, etc., if s/he writes a
request letter that explains the reason of changing the curriculum, then it can be
possible for her do as she wishes. By doing this, I believe the teachers would not lose
their enthusiasm, their creativeness and interest in their areas and open to changes
which is the best thing a country can have. Then, maybe the students gain a like
towards English and won’t try to learn it through all their lives.
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Question 2 – Analyze the administrative management theories.
a.
First of all I want to say that the Turkish Education system applies all three
administrative theories in its’ organizational system. One can’t sharply say that we use
this kind of system in all aspects. To start with evaluating Classical organization theories,
an item of which is Scientific Management, I can say that our education system partly has
some characteristics of it. The most important thing for Scientific Management is the
hierarchy, autonomy over the employees. Its aim is to increase productivity and decrease
soldiering, escaping from work, as much as possible. There are strict rules and a predetermined curriculum, cannot be changed according to the teachers. Well, when I take
these things into account, I see that we have most of them in our system. Of course, in
our case it is not like a mechanism in which people are working constantly like a
machine, but still the authority, hierarchy and an established curriculum is there.
When it comes to the Human Relations Approach, I see that some parts of our
education system are endowed with it. For instance the authority of the school manager;
it is not a strict authority which doesn’t think about the human being and personal needs
as happens in Scientific Management. There are a lot of thoughts on human feelings, for
example; a teacher can have permission and not come to school when s/he is sick or
have something important to do and another example can be, some schools try to
change their environment and decorate their classrooms for a better teaching-learning
environment. Also, there are some separated rooms for the teachers who are in the
same fields which improve the communication between the teachers and also a
teachers’ room in which all of the teachers interact and share their experiences.
As in our education system has some characteristics from Scientific Management and
some from Human Relations Approach, I can say that our system generally applies
Behavioral Science Approach which tries to mix the two. It means not making everything
too much strict and not giving too much consideration to human feelings, but keeping the
balance. One feature that the approach has but we don’t is; ‘’teachers can decide how
they teach and discuss the methods’’. At this point I can’t say we wholly apply this
approach because in our case, there is the curriculum having been set without the
permission for changing.
All in all, I think Turkish Education system uses some parts of the three approaches,
but applies the Human Relations Approach’s items much more which includes some
authority, hierarchy between the students, teachers and managers as well as a good
communication between them. The productivity is still important, but this is achieved in a
more humanistic way as in Human Relations Approach.
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REFERENCES
www.nvi.gov.tr/.../İcisleribakanligihizmeticiegitimyonetmeligi.doc, pp 3
http://ekutup.dpt.gov.tr/plan/plan.asp
http://ekutup.dpt.gov.tr/plan/plan1.pdf
http://www.egitim.aku.edu.tr/plan.htm
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