Investigation of the Relationship Between Teachers' Philosophies of Education Beliefs and Curriculum Design Approaches

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between teachers' philosophies of education beliefs and curriculum design approaches. The study group of this research consists of 280 teachers working in Van province. In this study, "Education Beliefs Scale" developed by Yilmaz, Altinkurt and Cokluk (2011) and "Teachers' Curriculum Design Orientations Preference Scale" developed by Bas (2013) were used as data collection tool. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation), Pearson Product Moments Correlation Coefficient and stepwise regression analysis. As a result of the research, it was found that the educational philosophies that teachers mostly adopt are existentialism, progressivism, reconstructionism, perennialism and essentialism, respectively; they adopt student-centered curriculum design approaches at most and the subject-centered curriculum design approaches at least. It was determined that there are significant and moderate relationships between teachers' philosophies of education and curriculum design approaches. In addition, it was determined that perennialism and essentialism are significant predictors of subject-centered curriculum design approach; progressivism and existentialism are significant predictors of student-centered curriculum design approach; reconstructionism and existentialism are significant predictors of problem-centered curriculum design approach.