Restructuring Studies of Teacher Education in Recent Years in Turkey

Abstract

Improvement of teacher quality is at the focal point of reform studies of education systems. Especially in the recent years PISA test organised by OECD and its results bring up the issue of rethinking about education of teachers in many countries. As in many European countries also in Turkey, initial teacher education is at higher education level. Regardless of the school levels, teacher education has been carried out at the higher education level since 1974 it is a norm in Turkey. In Turkish higher education system with the new arrangement in 1981 all higher education institutions are gathered under the umbrella of universities. In this context, teacher education institutions under Ministry of National Education (MoNE) then affiliated to the universities. In the following years that teacher education affiliated to universities new arrangements have been done. The most comprehensive one is the arrangement of 1997. This arrangement determined current teacher education model in Turkey and with this model, secondary education programmes became masters' degree programmes (5 years) and concurrent model transfered to consecutive model. By the same arrangement an emphasis put to subject matter methodology and practice at the schools and a committee founded, YMK (National Comittee of Teacher Education) by participation of all stakeholders. By updating studies performed between the years 2006-2008 especially pre-primary education and primary education (1-8th grades) programmes were revised and secondary education programmes in teacher education were shifted to concurrent model. These new arrangements have mainly focused on model and education programmes. However, research findings in Turkey about teacher education mostly draw attention to quality of the academic staff, over courseload of academic staff, physical infrastructure (classroom, laboratory etc.), inadequacy of information technologies and instructional equipments. So improvement of the quality of teacher education requires a good monitoring and evaluation system, not only model and education programmes but also improvement of the quality of academic staff, physical and technological infrastructure, practical conditions at the schools and taking other series of measures. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved