Development, validation, and application for a bilingual education curriculum in Turkey

Abstract

The right to education is one of the most essential rights ensured by international agreements. The right of mother tongue education is vital for a child to have equal access to education and derive benefits from that education as do other children. The literature has claimed that receiving bilingual education offers many benefits, such as preserving cultural and ethnic identity and the linguistic knowledge of minority groups, and helps in socialization so that minority group members are involved in the community. Therefore, a need exists to develop a bilingual education program for the benefit of the academic development and social life of minority communities. The purpose of this study is to investigate a bilingual education curriculum scale including certain parameters such as the views and attitudes towards bilingual education and curriculum development that may affect the development of a bilingual education curriculum in Turkey. The results indicated that "The Attitude Scale towards the Development of a Bilingual Education Curriculum (DBEC)" is a valid and reliable tool. The DBEC is a valid and reliable data collection tool for future studies on attitudes towards a bilingual education curriculum.