Democratic citizenship education in Turkish and Swedish upper secondary school curriculum

In each society, there is a certain set of features expected from the citizens that form the society. Education institutions are responsible for transferring these qualifications to the citizens. Hence, one of the tasks of the educational institutions is to raise citizens and what is meant by citizenship education is democracy education. Education ensures this task by organizing the curriculums of several courses in accordance with citizenship education in terms of goal, content, skill and value. One of these courses is history. The main purpose of this study is to examine upper secondary school history curriculum of Sweden and Turkey in accordance with citizenship education in terms of goal, content, skill and value, and to put forth differences and similarities of these countries in this regard. Because Sweden is accepted as one of the most democratic countries, comprehending the context of Swedish citizenship education in terms of goal, content, skill and value is thought to be significant for seeing the inadequacy of Turkish citizenship education and developing an opinion to apply suitable arrangements to the curriculum. Because it provides depiction, interpretation and comprehension of different views, it has been thought that qualitative research method is the most appropriate method for the study. In the research within the context of qualitative research methods, multi case study design is used. As data gathering method, with the purpose of describing upper secondary school democratic citizenship education of Turkey and Sweden in a comparative way (How is democratic citizenship education in Turkish and Swedish upper secondary school history curriculums in a comparative way), document analysis is used. As a document, Turkish and Swedish current upper secondary school curriculums are examined. These curriculums are examined in the context of themes based on the literature by the researcher (Content of themes which is prepared based on the relevant literature by the researcher). The documents used in the research classified, summarized and interpreted in accordance with these themes in the context of descriptive analysis. In the end of the study, it is determined that Turkish and Swedish upper secondary school history curriculums aim to raise democratic citizens and curriculums in terms of goal, content, skill and value support democratic citizenship education. It is concluded that history curriculum content of Sweden reflects 93 percent democracy content, while history curriculum content of Turkey reflects 33 percent democracy content. Turkish upper secondary school history curriculum focused on concurrency and success of Ottoman Empire and it gave place to activities that may lead to prejudice. In Swedish Upper Secondary School history curriculum, struggle against racism, prejudice, ethnocentrism and discrimination, and respect for difference accentuated. It has also been determined that the Swedish upper secondary school history curriculum is organized in order to make democracy a way of life and built an established democracy culture, while the Turkish upper secondary school history curriculum's content is intensive and not practical. Based on the results of the research, it has been suggested that the content of the Turkish upper secondary school history curriculum should be arranged to reduce the intensity of the content and to regulate it to gain skill and value. Also, should establish the content's relations with the present and history lessons should help students to keep up with globalization. Keywords: Citizenship, Citizenship Education, Democracy Education, History Education