An investigation of teachers' and students' opinions regarding fifth grade Turkish language course in terms of Turkish language teaching program (2018)

The aim of this study is to explore the opinions of teachers and students about teaching process of Turkish Language Curriculum. In addition to this purpose, Turkish Language Curriculum (2018) was examined in the process of teaching. The study was conducted in accordance with embedded single case design. Based on the exam performance, 20 schools that show low, average, and high level of success were selected. 20 teachers and 18 students were included in the study. In the process of data collection, some of the data were collected from teachers through interviews. Among the 20 schools, three schools which have low, average and high level of performance were selected. In these three schools, Turkish lessons were observed. Some students were selected for focus group discussion out of three schools in which Turkish lessons were observed. The data were analysed through content analysis technique. In the light of the data obtained from Turkish Language Curriculum (2018) and the process of teaching were analysed in terms of structural features, learning areas, learning outcomes, innovations, and the problems encountered. Within the framework of teacher and student opinions and the research diaries of observations, the findings of study indicated that in the curriculum themes and the subjects are appropriate and not appropriate, materials and tools are appropriate, some of the activities are not appropriate to students' level while the others are appropriate for the students' level, in terms of grammar students' preparedness is neglected, and the addition of new genre of text is positive. Learning areas are presented clearly in the curriculum. In terms of outcomes in the curriculum, they need to be supported by concrete examples. The findings showed that the number of the writing outcomes is limited and different examples are needed in the different learning areas. Moreover, it is hard to measure listening learning area. The reforms in the curriculum are evaluated positively, the additions of 21st century skills are considered as positive; however, they are not sufficiently related to lessons. Guidebooks are evaluated as both negative and positive. In terms of the problems of the curriculum, they do not meet the socio-cultural diversity and do not respond individual needs. Furthermore, the curriculum lack gaining reading habits to students, give them language pleasure, fail to transfer values education, lack number of activities in line with daily life. The findings also revealed that schools have physical shortcomings, teachers fail to implement lessons according to the curriculum, and the content of the curriculum is sometimes a higher level than students' level. Lastly, suggestions of teachers and students about Turkish Language Curriculum and process of teaching are as follow: activities and texts should be more related to real life, the necessity of gamification of lessons, multimodal texts and technology should be more present learning environments should be enriched, and there should be more robust and easy ways of measurement and evaluation.