Abstract:

A new national curriculum in all subject areas is about to be introduced in elementary schools in Turkey. The new curriculum is based on a “Constructivist” approach. This discussion paper focuses on the new curriculum for English as a foreign language, noting that teachers need information about the philosophy of the new curriculum and how its different elements support each other. The paper sets the curriculum reform in the context of international objectives in education such as the Dakar Conference, the Pisa project, Socrates programmes, the Common European Framework for Languages and the European Language Portfolio. The paper discusses the role of electronic learning in in-service training in both ongoing and one-shot teacher training programmes. The paper identifies four specific challenges and proposes solutions for a successful implementation of the new curriculum. The four challenges are how to make up the new curriculum comprehensible to teachers, how to help teachers develop their own materials, how to persuade teachers to participate in training process, and how to help teachers share their ideas.

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