The Opinions of the teachers who are working in pilot schools which are carrying out the new primary schools` curriculum

The demand for better education is rising from day to day in our country whichaccepted the politic of membership to the E.U. A new elementary school curriculumis developed by the board of training and education. The new curriculum is put intopractice in 120 schools in 9 cities as to se pros and cons.The aim of this research is to determine the perceptions of the teachers whowill be carrying out the new curriculum. For this purpose, semi-structured interviewis made with 5 female 20 male teachers working in pilot schools in Bolu. Questionsrelated to new curriculum were developed and asked to the participants. Thesequestions mainly focused on practicality and structure of the new curriculum.Obtained dataset are examined with content and descriptive analyzes. According tothe teachers, the positive sides of the program are as follows: i) The new curriculumenvisages students who explore and question the subject at hand, ii) it is student-centered, iii) students actively participate to all the activities actively and freelyexpress themselves, iv) the intensity of the subjects to be learned are reduced, v) itsupports the individual differences and uses it as a richness. On the other hand,negative sides of the program are as follows: i) they are not clear about thephilosophy of the curriculum accurately, ii) the materials are not enough for this pilotstudy, iii) parents of the students don?t accept the new curriculum and are resistantto change, iv) the duration and the content of the in-service training was not enough,v) the Ministry of Education, inspectors and the academicians didn?t support enoughduring the pilot study, vi) the technical background of all the schools is not adequateto carry out the curriculum, and vii) they couldn?t understand the philosophy of thealternative assessment techniques and don?t know how to use them. Somerecommendations of the teachers related to the positive and negative sides of thenew curriculum the participants for will presented.Key Words: curriculum, pilot study