Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
VII. Uluslararası Eğitim Programları ve Öğretim Kongresi, Ankara, Türkiye, 9 - 12 Ekim 2019, ss.269-270, (Özet Bildiri)
Universities are higher education institutions, which lead societies to catch to global developments and to be information
society, and they have some functions such as education, research and community service. These functions can be explained
in that way: To educate professionals whom the society needs with the pre-service education provided, to contribute to scientific
areas conducting basic and applied scientific research, and to enlighten the society and put the intellectual savings into
society’s service (Erdem, 2013). To perform these functions, higher education institutions must provide qualified education,
and it is obvious that the extent to which a qualified education can be ensured depends on the curricula of these higher
education institutions. For that reason, the higher education institutions, which are leading foundations in society in terms of
education and instruction, research, community service, culture, sports, economy, politics and administration (ibid) must
perform their roles with the qualification of their curricula. When considered that the number of higher education institutions is
18,400 (Whed.net,2019) and the number of students in higher education is approximately 240 billion (Calderon, UNESCO; as
cited in ICEF monitor, 2018), it can be seen that how vital a qualified curricula in higher education because it reaches numerous
people. On the other hand, another vital issue is pre-school education which corresponds a significant period of human life. To
be aware that mental development is mainly completed in this period increases the importance of the activities and education
to be provided in this period, and in parallel with the developments and tendencies in Turkey and in the world, the importance
given to pre-school education also deepens (Aslanargun & Tapan, 2012). At this point, curriculum in pre-school education and
teachers who will give that education are so essential. Being parallel with that essence, curriculum in pre-school teaching
programmes has the upmost significance. However, the curricula applied can be different based on countries and institutions.
These differences (and similarities if any) can be in terms of degree of study, models in curricula, learning outcomes, periodcredits
to be taken and content, services which can affect the curriculum, compatibility to Bologna Process, and research.
Consequently, to be aware of these differences and similarities based on countries and institutions is considered worthwhile
so as to comprehend and evaluate the curricula. Therefore, in this study, it was aimed to compare pre-school teaching curricula
in METU in Turkey and University of Tartu in Estonia. The research was conducted with content analysis model, and it is a
qualitative study. According to Weber (1990, p.9), content analysis is a research technique in which valid interpretations taken
from the text are produced as a result of a serief of processes. So, it was considered suitable for this study. Moreover, the
comparison was made in terms of some themes such as degree, study period and credit, content, services/activities to
influence the programme, compatibility to Bologna Process and its objectives, and research as noted above, and these themes
were confirmed by an expert in the field of Curriculum and Instruction. The data was collected with document analysis, which
consists of written materials including information about the events or phenomena (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992; Goetz & LeComte,
1984; as cited in Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2004). Thence, in this way, the official websites of the universities were analyzed in
accordance with the themes with descriptive analysis. As the result of the study, it was found that two programmes had a lot
of similarities and some differences on aforementioned themes. It was seen that pre-school teaching programmes in these two
universities, Middle East Technical University and Tartu University, had similarities in terms of many themes such as degree
of study, approach and model in curriculum, content, learning outcomes, the number of credits to be taken, services to influence
the programme, compatibility to Bologna Process and its objectives, and research. However, it was noticed that these
universities had only some minor differences in the themes. In consideration of these results, it is considered that the success
of both universities and their programmes can depend on these similarities, and they can be improved via taking after the
positive differences. At the very end of the study, some specific suggestions were presented regarding similarities and
differences based on the findings.
Keywords: Higher Education, Curriculum in Higher Education, Pre-school Teaching, Teacher Education.