Evaluation of fourth grade Turkish curriculum in terms of teachers opinions

The aim of this research is to evaluate the reading, writing, listening, speaking, visual reading and visual presentation skills included in Turkish Curriculum -which has been valid since 2009-2010 academic years for the 4th grade of elementary schools - according to teachers' views. In addition to this overall objective of the study, elementary school 4th grade teachers' opinions about students' acquisitions, activities, methods and techniques, materials and lastly, measurement and evaluation were investigated. To determine teacher's opinions about reading, writing, listening, speaking, visual reading and visual presentation skills in the Turkish curriculum, convergent parallel mixed methods design in which qualitative and quantitative data were collected together was used. The population of this study is fourth grade teachers who work in Adana's central districts (Seyhan, Yüreğir, Çukurova and Sarıçam), in 2009-2010 academic year. To determine the quantitative sample of this research, elementary school in Adana's central districts (Seyhan, Yüreğir, Çukurova and Sarıçam) were classified in terms of their socio-economic level and 41 schools were chosen using randomly cluster sampling method. Quantitative sample of this research consists of 175 fourth grade teachers working in these 41 elementary schools. To determine the qualitative sample of this research 41 elementary schools in which questionnaires were applied were classified as low- middle and high socioeconomic levels. 10 teachers constitute the qualitative sample of this research caring that all of the socioeconomic levels were represented in this research using dimensional sampling. In this research a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview form which developed by researcher were used. In this research, quantitative data were calculated in terms of frequency, percentages and arithmetic mean. Data were calculated on the computer with SPSS 11.5 packet program. Content analysis was conducted to analyze the qualitative data. As a result of the study it was determined that majority of the teachers have positive opinions about Turkish curriculum. Besides, it is found that teachers think that the biggest obstacles in implementing Turkish curriculum are crowded classes and the lack of materials. It was seen that teachers' opinions were similar for all of the learning areas. It is remarkable that there are few differentiations about percentage of agreement in terms of visual reading and visual presentation learning areas. Keywords: Turkish lesson, curriculum development, curriculum evaluation