Internal and External Influences on Curriculum Reform in Citizenship Education in Turkey

• In Event: Roundtable Session 40
  In Roundtable Session: Democratic Citizenship in Education SIG Paper Discussion

Abstract

In 2010 the Turkish Board of Education (BoE) introduced a new rights-based citizenship education course to supersede the previous civics courses that promoted nationalist-militarist norms and values. This paper explores the internal and external influences on this curriculum reform drawing on a dataset derived from semi-structured interviews with 16 officials involved in the reform and documents obtained from the BoE’s archive. The analysis finds that the reform was initiated by the government’s intent to achieve European Union membership and demonstrate democratization. It further reveals that external support for democratic citizenship education could be counter-productive in nationalist context where political power does not explicitly support the promotion of democracy and human rights in education.

Author

• Kerim Sen, University College London