EVALUATION OF 2018 LIFE SCIENCES CURRICULUM CONTENT

Abstract

Primary school education is the first level of basic education in the Turkish Education System. The basic education is the stage where children start to develop both personally and academically. In the primary school period, in addition to literacy education in Turkish, children receive education related to other basic skills through such courses as mathematics, sciences and life sciences. sciences course is regarded as the pivotal lesson, which has been in the heart of all the other lessons from past to present. sciences curriculum underwent changes, starting from the first years of the republic, in the years of 1926, 1936, 1948, 1968 and 1998, 2004, 2009, 2015, 2017 and 2018. Considering the 2018 life sciences curriculum structure, which was revised last, it is observed that this curriculum is composed of general objectives, values, basic life skills, concepts, units and attainments. In 2018 life sciences curriculum, the themes were replaced by the units. Based on the unit-based approach of the life sciences curriculum, six units having the same titles namely Life at Our School, Life at Our Home, Healthy Life, Safe Life, Life in Our Country and Life in Nature were determined for three grade levels. In this study, the opinions of classroom teachers regarding the 2018 life sciences curriculum content were revealed. The sample of the study consisted of 323 classroom teachers, teaching the 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades, chosen from the classroom teachers working in Pamukkale and Merkezefendi districts of Denizli province through simple random sampling method. The data in the study were collected via the Evaluation of life sciences curriculum according to teachers' views developed by Turkyilmaz (2011). The Cronbach Alpha value of the original scale was 0.895, and it was found to be 0.978 in this study. The classroom teachers presented their opinion by stating “I agree” about the appropriateness of the content in 2018 life sciences curriculum. The classroom teachers believed that the topic of willingness to do research is not sufficiently covered in 2018 life sciences curriculum. There is no significant difference in the opinions of the classroom teachers about the 2018 life sciences curriculum content according to gender, professional seniority, education level and the grade taught. Article visualizations: