Teacher Training for the Primary Education and Employment Policies during the Republic in Turkey

Abstract

The founders of the Republic established new teacher training institutions such as village teacher schools, middle teacher school, village educator courses, village institutions, and village high institutions by regulating the teacher schools according to the principles of the Republic. The governments, coming into power after entering into a period of multi party system in 1946, started applying liberal policies in education. Teacher training schools for the village were closed. The teacher training to the primary education was run by the Primary Teacher Schools until 1974. The teachers were trained by the two-year Educational Institutions after that time. The teacher training schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) were affiliated with the universities in 1982. However, the universities were insufficient to meet the teacher demand of the primary education. The Council of Higher Education (YOK) started a new regulation in the faculties of education. According to the new regulation, it was started to train the teachers to the primary education in four-year programmes. In spite of this new positive development, YOK opened up a number of faculties in the name of meeting the teacher demand without actually examining the number of available academicians at universities. YOK not only increased the capacities of these faculties but also permitted the opening of evening class programmes and diverged from training qualified teachers. Practices such as transported education, contractual teaching, temporary substitute teachers, career steps in teaching ease and spread the privatization of education and can be seen in the practices of the Ministry of National Education in the year 2010 as public policy. The coordination between YOK, MoNE, and State Planning Organization (DPT) should be ensured and employment based teacher training policies should be adopted and practiced. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.