Investigation of findings of research on Turkish language curricula: A meta-synthesis study

The studies that evaluate curricula are instructive in updating the curricula that are currently implemented or will be implemented in future. However, many curriculum development studies are conducted with a limited number of participants and with certain restrictions. This study aims to perform a holistic evaluation and synthesis of the studies which evaluated the Turkish language curricula which started to be implemented in 2006 and 2015. The study was conducted using the meta-synthesis method, a qualitative research approach. The study covers 10 master's thesis studies and 11 articles in which the data were collected through interviews from the participants who were Turkish teachers or classroom teachers. The total number of participants in these 21 studies was 299. The teacher views in the academic studies concerning the Turkish language curricula which started to be implemented in 2006 and 2015 were analyzed and synthesized to obtain five basic themes: (i) the curriculum is not implementable, (ii) the curriculum is implementable, (iii) the curriculum has negative repercussions on the implementation, (iv) the curriculum has positive repercussions on the implementation, and (v) the curriculum can be improved using recommendations. According to the teacher views in the theme "The curriculum is not implementable," the curricula are not suitable for the environment, school and student potential as well as for each socio-economic level; there is no sufficient time for implementation; the teachers fail to master the conceptual framework of the curriculum; the goals/learning outcomes are not suitable for the level of students; and the process-based assessment and evaluation is hard to implement. The teacher views in the theme "The curriculum is implementable" were opposite of the views "The curriculum is not implementable." This implies that the basic problems in question did not result from the curricula, and the way the problems were defined could be attributable to professional identities, professional beliefs, perspectives and experiences of the teachers. In this regard, it was concluded that the problems mentioned in connection with previous curricula could arise during the implementation of the 2018 Turkish language curriculum.