Investigation of the teachers' adaptation process of the mathematics curricula

As curriculum are frequently changed in Turkey, it becomes important to understand how teachers adapt to these new curriculum. It is essential to determine how teachers adapt these curriculum according to their schools and classrooms in order to take measures for not wasting all innovations and provide options to teachers. The aim of this study is to examine the teachers' adaptation process of the curriculum and discover the factors affecting this process in the light of changes in the ninth grade mathematics curricula published in 2013-2014 academic year. "Curriculum adaptation" can be defined as turning a programme into a better one by making changes on it and deciding what parts of it are useful or not useful. This study aims to examine in depth different aspects of the topic with a qualitative approach through a small group of teachers. Therefore, case study was chosen as the design of the study. The study group consists of five mathematics teachers who teach ninth grades in Anatolian High School, Vocational High School, Vocational School of Health and Multi-Program High School in Eşme district of the province of Uşak. Three different techniques were used in collecting the data. These are, observation of teaching practices in the classroom, interviews and document reviews. Content analysis was carried out for the analysis of qualitative data. The findings show that teachers' impact on the plans they make based on the curriculum provided by MONE (Ministry of National Education) is extremely limited, and teachers are not able to reflect the adaptations they think of on their plans. Because the teachers see the curriculum as "a criterion to fulfil when they are inspected", they do not feel autonomous and as inspections are based on these plans, they tend to create an impression to be following the curriculum word-for-word. For this reason, what "following a curriculum" means to the teachers participated in our study is to "abide by the curriculum (curriculum fidelity)" and apply it as it requires. Teachers believe that there should be nominal adaptations on plans in order not to experience any problems during inspections; but they do apply these adaptations in their practices. This causes a gap between the plans and applications, and the adaptations made according to school and student variables are not able to be reflected on curricula created afterwards. It also causes a misperception that teachers have to follow the curriculum blindly. According the findings, although the MONE published one single secondary school mathematics curriculum for all types of schools in the country, this curriculum is not applied the same way in every type of school and every class, and that teachers have made efforts to reflect the decisions they make according to characteristics and needs of students in the teaching process. Our participant teachers' types of adaptation were "omitting", "creating", "replacing", "changing the amount of time", "superficial teaching" and "using different sources/materials". These types of adaptation are focused on the content and timing of curriculum. It is also observed that, when the adaptations made by teachers from different types of schools are compared, they are all the same in form but differ in reasons and frequent types of adaptations according to the student profiles of schools they work in. While the main purpose of teachers in schools where the majority of students are of lower general ability and academic achievement levels is to adapt the curriculum in order to make up for the readiness of the students and bring them to a suitable level to enable them grasp the subjects in curriculum better (re-teach); the purpose of teachers in schools where the majority of students are of higher general ability and academic achievement levels is to carry the students beyond their current level of success (in-depth teaching) and prepare them for the university entry exams. In the context of Turkey, factors may affecting the adaptation of the curriculum are high stakes tests, supervision, readiness of students and the curriculum itself. While it is seen in Western studies that the factors affecting adaptation of curricula are mainly focused on teacher qualification, this study shows that factors determined under the context of Turkey are mainly about the centralist education system. Depending on the findings, this study has also suggestions for further studies and applications.