The philosophical foundations of alternative schools and their practices in Turkey: Istanbul province sample

The aim of this study is to examine the philosophical foundations of the intellectual structure and its practices in Turkey, which is described as alternative school. The alternative education approach considering the happiness of the child as the basic goal has developed through the criticism of the traditional education which is described as authoritarian, teacher-centered and success oriented. The alternative education comes up with the idea of taking the happiness of the child as the main principle. This study has been essential since the traditional education has fallen behind in ensuring and maintaining one's own efforts on creating himself or herself in the changing world and in the enrichment of learning content. In this study the reasons that make alternative schools more attractive and its philosophical background have been analyzed. Also Turkey's practices in alternative education have been examined considering similarities and differences between the actual alternative educational practices and the ones in Turkey. J.J Rousseu is one of the most influential philosophers who offered an alternative to the traditional education. This study includes the arguments and opinions of the philosophers who contributed significantly to the philosophy of alternative education, and furthermore, the foundations of the mentioned philosophy have been revealed. The differences between the traditional and alternative education have been analyzed. The above-mentioned research is a qualitative research. In the course of the research interviews have been carried out with school managers and teachers performing in schools which apply the alternative educational approaches such as Montessori, Reggio Emilia and Waldorf. Relevant semi-structured interview forms have been prepared and they have been used as data in the researcher's observations. Consequently the educational and management status of Turkey's alternative schools have been examined. In the study, the findings have been made use of pertaining to school background, teachers' tasks, class management, curriculum, child development, parent-school relationship, school management and education model.