Analyzing of secondary school Turkish curricula in terms of functional writing (1924-2017)

The aim of this study is to contribute to the practical needs of writing by determining the role of 'functional writing' in secondary school Turkish curricula. Learning outcomes of practical writing are constituted from literature and listed with the help of an expert. Some of these learning outcomes are as follows: filling out a job application form, sending an e-mail, issuing bills, writing a resume, a letter, a condolences and a greeting card, a recipe, a report, a text, etc. To that end, all secondary school Turkish curricula which have been applied until 2019 are included in the study so as to figure out the changes and needs of practical writing since 1924. Document analysis (historical method) is used in this study. Documents are obtained through open access resources and from authentic texts. Since there are differences in the editing of programmes (such as in aims, goals, actions and learning outcomes), only 'aims' and 'learning outcomes' of functional writing are included to study during the categorical analysis of data. Since some curricula do not specify the outcome details, the expressions that have the characteristics of a goal or purpose were analyzed after determining their compatibility with the acquisitions in the functional writing outcome list. In the research, answers were sought to the questions of which functional writing objectives and achievements are included in each program and what kind of changes there are between the programs, depending on the main problem of how functional writing achievements develop and change in the secondary school Turkish curriculum prepared from 1924 to the present day. As a result, it has been concluded that all of the programmes are insufficient in terms of the learning outcomes list and instead of fulfilling the daily writing needs of students, they mainly focus on academic and literary practices of writing. However, among all these programmes, Turkish Secondary School Curriculum of 1949 is the most inclusive. Keywords: functional writing, Turkish education curriculums, literacy