Özet:

The authors of the current early childhood education curriculum in Turkey, underlined that different early childhood education approaches and models have been used to construct curriculums in other countries. They go on to describe their curriculum as a synthesis of child centred practices developed in accordance with different learning theories and models. However, they did not mention which learning theories and models they applied or how they utilised them. For this reason, the purpose of this study is to examine which of the mainstream curriculum models including Montessori, High Scope, Waldorf, and Reggio Emilia are included in the Turkish early childhood curriculum launched in 2013. These curriculum models were examined through the content analysis method. The Turkish ECE curriculum was comparatively examined with the mainstream curriculum models. The Turkish ECE curriculum was divided into nine main categories and each category was investigated to identify the effects of mainstream curriculum models. The findings of the study indicated that while most parts of the Turkish ECE curriculum like objectives or characteristics of the curriculum carried the traces of mainstream curriculum models, some parts are unique such as assessment or adaptation.

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