Abstract:

Students' interests and needs, which are one of the effective conditions in their learning, are an important stage of program evaluation and development studies. During religious education, the student who encounters a subject that he is interested in and is curious about will have a higher desire to learn and it will be easier for learning to take place. In the study, the curriculum achievements of the Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge (RCMK) Course were examined in the light of the students' thoughts about their interests and needs. The aim of this study is to reveal the compatibility of the achievements of the eleventh grade “World and Hereafter Unite” and “Prophet Muhammad According to the Qur’an Unit” of the RCMK Course Curriculum, prepared in 2018 with the interests, needs and expectations of the students. In the study, mixed research method using qualitative and quantitative data was used. Participation in the study was carried out on a voluntary basis. Accordingly, 294 students who are studying or graduated from 5 Anatolian high schools in the city center of Kayseri responded to the questionnaire form and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 students. As a result, it was seen that the most intense student interest was in the achievements of the Prophet Muhammad According to the Qur’an Unit in the 11th grade RCMK Course Curriculum. The achievements that students think they have learned at the highest rate are also the achievements of the same unit. In addition, it was determined that the students could not fully understand the relationship between the life of this world and the life in the hereafter, that they did not see the need to learn funeral farewell practices in school by considering them only in a theoretical dimension, and that they were disturbed by miraculous or threatening discourses in the teaching of devotion and obedience to the Prophet Muhammad and his exemplary personality.

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