An Investigation into the 11th Grade National Philosophy Curriculum in Turkey

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the attainments and their descriptions, and units of the 11th grade level Turkish Philosophy curriculum, introduced in Turkey in the academic year 2018-2019 in order to display its advantages and disadvantages. In this study, a qualitative research method ‘document analysis technique’ was used. The attainments of the curriculum what learning domains they corresponded to and what level of behavior they represented were analyzed. The study, found that all the attainments belonged to the cognitive domain and that out of the 21 attainments, 10 of them corresponded to representative behaviors at the comprehension level, 5 of them at the analysis level, 5 of them at the evaluation level and 1 of them at the knowledge level. The units integrated in the curriculum that referred to the periods of history of philosophy were named differently from widely accepted names used Philosophy literature. The descriptions of the attainments did not fully reflect the scope of some attainments and neglected some periods in the history of philosophy. Nevertheless, the curriculum had positive qualities such as philosophical writing, text reading and the inclusion of Turkish-Islamic philosophers. The study recommends that the identified problems should be resolved to make the curriculum functional and eliminate its defects.