Teachers’ principled resistance to curriculum change : A compelling case from Turkey

1. Teachers’ principled resistance to curriculum change: A compelling case from Turkey

2. Outline • Reform implementation • Teachers’ resistance • Contextual background: Turkey • Methodology • Findings • Teacher views on content change • Teaching practices • Teacher motives for supplementing the curriculum • Conclusion

3. Reform implementation • Role of teachers • Curriculum mediation • Factors: Educational level, knowledge, skills, identity, beliefs, age • Typology of teacher responses

4. Teacherresistance • Definition: A desire and intention to maintain existing practices in the face of changes that teachers consider to be undesirable and threatening. • Causes of resistance • Typical characterisation

5. Principled resistance • Overt or covert acts that reject instructional policies, programmes, or other efforts that contradict teachers’ professional principles • Motives for resistance

6. Background information :Turkey • Size: 783 000 sq km • Population: 76 million • Official language: Turkish

7. Curriculumchange • Rationale for curricular change • Knowledgeeconomy • Globalisation • EU harmonisationprocess • Lowstudentmotivation • Lowinternational test results • Curriculum 2004 • Competency based curriculum • Student-centredpedagogy • Authenticassessment

8. Methodology • Fieldwork • Turkey (Spring 2009) • Sample • Pilot schools in Ankara (8) • School management, teachers and key informants • Interviews • 14 headteachersand deputy head teachers • 69 classroomteachers

9. Teacher views • Acknowledgement of the need for change • High content coverage requirements • Rote learning • Overloading of students • Time pressure to complete curriculum • Disagreement on what kind of change is needed

10. Welcomingchange • Children do not need to acquire much information up to grade five • The role of education in behavioural and attitudinal change is more important • Lessons are easier and more enjoyable • Studentslearn better • The role of teacher is no longer imparting knowledge, but teaching children about the ways to seek and attain knowledge

11. Opposing change • Content load is reduced too much • Too much focus on student activities • Quality of textbooks are low • Insufficient information on subject matters • Lessons are boring and superficial • Concerns about academic success • Exam dilemma • Intensification of educational inequalities

12. The majority supplemented the curriculum with additional knowledge Use of supplementary educationalmaterials Use of old textbooks Photocopy-centred learning Directteaching Teaching practices

13. The ‘emptiness’ of the books The myth of research assignments Preparing students for nationwide exams Old habits Parental pressure Teacher motives for supplementing the curriculum

14. Conclusion • Marginalization of knowledge acquisition • Two different types of resistance • Conventional resistance • Principled resistance • Tendency to perceive ‘knowledge’ as diametrically opposed to ‘competencies’ • Emptying the content, denying a distinct voice for knowledge in education