Abstract:

The curriculum of a subject comprises of the aims and objectives of the course, its content, time span, teaching materials and assessments procedures. Starting from 2005-2006 academic term, the curriculum of the Turkish Language and Literature course has been renewed. The current curriculum employs a new approach and handles the course in two main headings: Turkish Literature and Landuage and Narration (expression). The 2005 curriculum was revised in 2011, but its general structure was not altered explicitly. Teaching principles has to be considered in the processes of designing of the curriculum, writing of the textbooks, preparation of the teaching environments, selection of the teaching methods and materials and recruiting assessment tools. In consideration with the above criteria, this study aims to investigate the revised version of the Turkish Literature curriculum (grades 9-12) to find out whether it was designed in accordance with teaching principles. It was designed as a descriptive study employing document analysis as a data collection tool and analysis instrument. In the course of research, firstly a literature search was conducted to define the teaching principles that will be used as criteria in the analysis documentary materials. Secondly, the Turkish Literature curriculum was examined by three experts to find out its connections to and compatibility with the above mentioned teaching principles. The primary findings revealed that 19 teaching principles out of 27 are connected to or compatible with the current curriculum. Then, the curriculum was investigated comprehensively to see whether the each curricular item were related or connected to the above mentioned 19 principles. The further findings, indicate that the curriculum appropriately employs and reflects 5of those principles, while five principles are only partly reflected in it. On the other hand, the design of the remaining 9 principles were not appropriate to the teaching principles. As a result it was found out that the curriculum needs to be revised to take those remaining 9 teaching principles into account. Another findings of this study indicates that the potential revision of the Turkish Literature curriculum should not introduce its content in chronological order. Instead, the curriculum content should begin from contemporary issues and topics and progress towards the past.

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