An investigation into the views of academicians regarding curriculum fidelty

Curriculum fidelity is the implementation of the designed program by the educator in accordance with the original. The aim of this study is to examine the opinions of academicians at Yeditepe University regarding program fidelity. The group under investigation consists of 120 academicians from different faculties working at Yeditepe University in the 2017 - 2018 academic year. In this study, descriptive research method was used to describe the level of curriculum fidelity of the academicians to the programs. Data were obtained through literature review and questionnaire application. The data was analyzed through descriptive statistics. Items related to curriculum and lesson plan fidelity were included in the questionnaire developed by the researcher. The questionnaire's validity was investigated through experts' judgment and its reliability coefficient was found to be .71. The findings of this study are in parallel with the findings of the literature; in that it can be concluded that the faculty members' fidelity to the curriculum and lesson plans is at the highest level in terms of objectives and evaluation elements. It was determined that content and educational status items were ranked following the target and evaluation items. In general, it can be said that the items investigating curriculum and lesson plan fidelity is moderate. In this study, where the opinions of the academicians about the concept of program fidelity were examined, it can be suggested that it would be beneficial to provide trainings, explaining the importance of program learning outcomes, and the harmony of the objectives in universities, in order to improve the educational competence of academicians and to increase the efficiency of higher education programs.