The investigation of the controversial issues in the null curriculum in the context of elementary and secondary school curricula

This study aims to identify the controversial issues in Turkey based on the views of some of education stakeholders such as teachers, instructors and delegates of education unions; and analyze the curricula of elemantary education in the context of those controversial issues. The research design of the study is basic qualitative research which is one of the descriptive research models. The participants of the study were twenty six class, religious culture and ethics, Turkish, science, maths and English teachers who taught in public elementary and secondary schools in the center of Eskişehir in 2016-2017 school year; two hundred and fifty instructors from the departments of universities' educational sciences, maths and science, Turkish and social sciences, primary education, foreign languages and fine arts; and the delegates of five education unions. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with teachers and open ended questionnaires with instructors and the delegates of education unions. Besides, the curricula of compulsory courses in elemantary education were analyzed through document analysis. Inductive analysis method was used to analyse all the data collected through research and content analysis was used to analyze the semi-structured interviews. The study revealed that the controversial issues which were identified by the help of education stakeholders were covered at the least within the aim, content and instruction components of curricula of compulsory courses in elemantary education, in other words it was null curriculum. Keywords: Controversial issues, Curriculum types, Null curriculum, Basic qualitative research