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Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice - 12(1) • Winter • 295-299
©2012 Educational Consultancy and Research Center
www.edam.com.tr/estp
İbrahim Hakkı ÖZTÜRKa
Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University
Abstract
This study seeks to analyze the role of history teachers in instructional planning and their areas of autonomy in
Turkey. The concept of teacher autonomy briefly refers to the authority and freedom of teachers in the planning
and implementation of the instructional activities and the decisions made during the instructional process. The
objective of the present study is to investigate the degree of participation of the teachers in the selection and
preparation of the teaching methods, content and materials throughout the preparation and implementation
of the annual instructional plans. The study aims to analyze the issue in depth by qualitative research design
focusing on a small sampling group consisting 11 participants. The findings have indicated that the role of the
teachers in the preparation of the annual instructional plans was quite limited and that the contents of the plans
were mostly borrowed from textbooks and the official curriculum. It was also observed that, in the classroom
practices, teachers usually reflected their preferences and personal decisions on the instructional process
more than what was given in the instructional plans. However, it is difficult to say that this flexibility was able to
provide an instructional process designed in line with the classroom realities and the students’ learning styles.
Key Words
Instructional Planning, Annual Instructional Plans, History Teaching, Teacher Autonomy.
Teacher’s Role and Autonomy in Instructional Planning:
The Case of Secondary School History Teachers with
regard to the Preparation and Implementation of Annual
Instructional Plans
In the scientic literature, the concept of the
teacher autonomy is dened by many scholars and
these denitions contain important dierences.
However, one common ground the dierent de-
nitions agree on is that the concept of autonomy
refers essentially to the freedom and the power of
the teachers in their professional activities (Castle,
2004; Friedman, 1999; Pearson & Hall, 1993; Short,
1994). e teacher autonomy is not conned to the
planning and implementing of the teaching activi-
ties. It covers equally the improvement of the teach-
ers’ role and power in decision-making regarding
the regulation of working conditions and school
environment, and the management of the human,
nancial and material sources (Friedman, 1999;
Öztürk, 2011a).
e recognition of greater powers for teachers is es-
sential to ensure that they properly carry out their
duties and do their assignments. e low degree of
power and autonomy assigned to the teachers in
the draing and planning of the teaching methods
and contents lie in conict with the larger sphere of
their responsibilities (Ingersoll, 2007). e teacher
autonomy is a very important consideration in
recognizing teaching as a profession and develop-
ing professional teachers. If teachers are to be em-
powered and regarded as professional individuals,
a İbrahim Hakkı ÖZTÜRK, Ph.D., is currently an
Assistant Professor at the Department of History
Education of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University.
His research interests include history teaching
methods, with a particular focus on history text-
books, teacher autonomy and computer-based
methods and materials. Correspondence: Assist.
Prof. İbrahim Hakkı ÖZTÜRK, Çanakkale Onsekiz
Mart University, College of Education, Depart-
ment of History Education, Çanakkale/Turkey.
E-mail: ibra.ozturk@gmail.com Phone: +90 286
2170954/3018.
EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES: THEORY & PRACTICE
296
like medical doctors or lawyers, they must have the
power and freedom in their professional practices
(Pearson & Moomaw, 2005; Webb, 2002).
Otherwise, many researchers stress the impor-
tance of the balance between the autonomy and
the responsibility for the eective functioning of
the school activities (Anderson, 1987; Gutmann,
1999). Some researchers (Little, 1990; Pearson &
Moomaw, 2005) warn that the autonomy should
neither be perceived nor employed as a kind of
freedom that keeps teachers away from cooperation
with their colleagues and the school management,
leaving them in professional isolation.
Teacher Autonomy in Instructional Planning in
Turkey
Instructional plans have a crucial function in help-
ing teachers participate in the planning of instruc-
tional practices, which enables teachers to create
a unique design for their own students. Student-
Centered approaches make it necessary that the
curriculum programs should be dynamic and be
designed in a shape that is conducive to further
development and modications during the imple-
mentation process (Galton, 1998). e process of
curriculum development does not end with the
preparation of curriculum programs; it continues
with the teachers’ instructional planning activities,
nalizing with the actual delivery of the instruction
in the classroom (Varış, 1997).
Teachers are usually involved in the nation-wide or
school-based curriculum development and renewal
activities (Demirel, 2006; White, 1992). But, the main
function of teachers during the task of curriculum
development comes into the foreground with plan-
ning and implementation of instructional activities.
According to Connelly (as cited in Ben-Peretz, 1990)
teacher still have a crucial role in program develop-
ment even when they are given the task of imple-
menting a ready-made package program by resort-
ing to their own decisions and modications while
adapting the curriculum according to their specic
context and teaching conditions. It is necessary that
the teachers are given the possibility to adapt the cur-
ricula in line with their own teaching context, so that
they can participate actively and eectively to cur-
riculum reform eorts (Johns, 2002). It seems that
one of the obstacles for teachers to deal with while
making instructional decisions and applying them is
limitations on teacher autonomy (Boote, 2006).
e curriculum reform realized in Turkey during
2000’s introduced the student-centred approach
that aims to diversify the teaching contents and
methods according to dierent needs, interests
and levels of the pupils (Eğitim Reformu Girişimi
[ERG], 2005; Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı [MEB], n.d.).
is change requires that the teacher adopt the
role of a guide whose main duty is to rearrange the
teaching context in line with the needs and inter-
ests of the particular student group (Özden, 2005).
However, the Turkish education system is largely
dominated by an approach that denes centrally
and very tightly the curriculum planning and its
implementation (Yıldırım, 2003; Vorkink, 2006).
e implementation of the curriculum reform
goals’ requires the improvement of the teacher’s
role and autonomy in dening and planning of the
teaching activities.
In the Turkish context, while the in-service teach-
ers’ views, attitudes and practices towards the in-
structional planning is studied thoroughly (e.g.
Akpınar & Özer, 2006, 2008; Boyacı, 2009; Can,
2007, 2009; İşman & Eskicumalı, 2003; Şirinkan
& Gündoğdu, 2011; Taşdemir, 2006; Yıldırım,
2003; Yıldırım & Öztürk, 2002), these studies do
not pay a particular attention to issue of teacher
autonomy. Moreover, with a few exceptions (e.g.
Öztürk, 2011b), curriculum reform has not been
studied from the perspective of teacher autonomy.
In Turkey, the concept of teacher autonomy is stud-
ied very mostly in the context of foreign language
teaching (e.g. Sert, 2007; Üstünlüoğlu, 2009).
Purpose
is study aims to explore secondary school history
teachers’ experiences during the process of the de-
velopment of instructional plans and its application,
with a focus on the teachers’ role and autonomy
in this process. e study attempts to examine the
teachers’ inuence in instructional planning, their
roles in the selection of the contents of instructional
activities, methods and materials and also the prob-
lems that arise, linking them with the hidden factors
that path the way for these troubles. Furthermore,
the study has also focused on the implementation
of the annual instructional plans, thus managing
to shed light on the dierences between the ocial
curriculum and operational curriculum (Posner,
1995) that is actually taking place in schools.
Method
is study has adopted a case study design as its
methodology. Case study methodology involves an
ÖZTÜRK / Teacher’s Role and Autonomy in Instructional Planning: The Case of Secondary School History Teachers...
297
in-depth examination of a single instance or event.
Despite its inability to oer generalizable nd-
ings, they provide in-depth explanations and de-
scriptions in the analysis of educational problems
(Mertler & Charles, 2005).
Sampling
In this study, the participants were selected from his-
tory teachers at secondary schools in Çanakkale, a city
in western Turkey, and one of its districts, Bayramiç.
A total of 11 teachers participated in the study, six of
them were female and ve of them were male.
Data Collection and Analysis
For the data collection purposes, a triangulation of
three techniques was used in the study: interview,
observation in the eld, and document analysis
(Punch, 2005; Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2004). Triangu-
lation refers to the application and combination of
several research methodologies in the study of the
same phenomenon. It was deemed to be necessary
to use a variety of data collection techniques to be
able to diversify the types of data and to be able to
oer dierent perspectives on the issue. Triangu-
lation is used frequently in case studies (Cohen &
Manion, 1994).
e data analyzed in the study were collected dur-
ing the spring term of 2010 and lasted about a
month. For the document analysis part of the study,
the teachers were asked to provide the researcher
with their annual instructional plans of history
courses. e document analysis includes also of-
cial history curriculum (MEB, 2008) and other
relevant documents regulating the instructional
planning (MEB, 2003, 2005, 2009). Finally, some
of the history textbooks were also investigated (e.g.
Cazgır, Genç, Çelik, Genç, & Türedi, 2009).
Discussion
e ndings indicate that the teachers, participat-
ing in this study, have a limited inuence on the
preparation of the instructional plans. e contents
of the annual instructional plans are usually taken
-as they are- from the ocial curriculum issued by
the Ministry of Education and the textbooks. us
it is evident that the preferences and decisions of
the teachers are rarely reected in the preparation
of course materials and instructional plans. Hence,
the needs and learning styles of the students are not
taken into consideration. ese ndings support
the results of the earlier studies (Akpınar & Özer,
2006, 2008; Boyacı, 2009; Yıldırım, 2003).
However, the case is quite dierent when it comes
to the implementation of the plans and real in-
structional practices taking place in the classroom
context. During the application phase, teacher are
able to reect their own preferences and decisions
on the instructional activities and their teaching
styles more than prescribed in the annual instruc-
tional plans. In other words, it has been observed
that teachers have a larger area of autonomy in the
application stage, which is made possible by the pri-
vacy nature of the classroom environment, which
is partially detached from the eects of the outer
world. e classroom environment provides the
teacher with a certain degree of autonomy because
the teacher is the unique authority in his classroom
and there is hardly any direct control and supervi-
sion on his activities, with a few exceptions like the
ocial supervision procedures done by the Min-
istry. is phenomenon that Bidwell (as cited in
Gamoran, Secada, & Marrett, 2000) describes using
the term of structural looseness is a characteristic of
the teacher profession. However, we cannot say that
this autonomy and exibility in the classroom prac-
tices were able to provide an instructional process
designed in line with the students’ needs, expecta-
tions and learning styles. Particularly, in the classes
accommodating students with learning dicul-
ties, it has been observed that many problems have
arisen with regard to the application of the annual
instructional plans. e teacher exibility in the ap-
plication process does not suce to bridge the gap
between instructional plans and classroom realities.
e teacher exibility in the application process,
as observed on the teacher participant group, has
resulted in dierent practices in terms of the se-
lection of course contents and materials as well as
the teaching techniques. While the teachers were
more dependent on the ocial curriculum in the
selection of course contents, they were more able to
reect their own decisions and preferences on the
selection of teaching methods and materials.
According to the results of some studies (Eu-
rydice, 2008; Organisation for Economic Coop-
eration and Development (OECD), 2005), in the
most of the European countries, the course con-
tents are defined by official curricula and, thus
the degree of autonomy allowed to teachers de-
pends basically to organization of the curricula.
In this sense, the flexibility of the official curri-
cula is of great importance. It is essential that the
curriculum be flexible and leaves some space for
EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES: THEORY & PRACTICE
298
the teacher so that the teachers can reflect their
individual preferences on their teaching practic-
es (Hesapçıoğlu, 2008). In context of the teachers
participating in this study, the lack of flexibility
in Turkish history curriculum is a very impor-
tant factor effecting teachers’ instructional plan-
ning activities. Regarding the selection of course
contents in particular, the high density of the of-
ficial curriculum contents appears as one of the
basic obstacles for improving teachers’ role and
autonomy in instructional planning.
In the literature, it is said that there is a link between
teacher contributions to curriculum development
process and their degree of professional develop-
ment (Macpherson, Brooker, Aspland, & Elliott,
1999). e professional development is also pre-
requisite to eectively put into practice the teacher
autonomy (Steh & Pozarnik, 2005). e ndings of
the study have revealed that there are some dier-
ences among the teachers in terms of the level of
participation in the planning and improvement of
the instructional practices. It has been observed
that the contributions of teachers, with sucient
knowledge, skills and motivation, to the eective
use of the new teaching methods and materials are
at a higher level.
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