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The topic is about charter schools in US. It is not easy to understand what is charter school but it is like a publicly founded school where the "educational experience is qualitatively different". They just try different style of learning. "Charters were originally a progressive movement (called the "small schools" movement) started by University of Massachusetts professor Ray Budde and American Federation of Teachers leader, Al Shanker to explore best practices for education without bureaucracy." (wikipedia: charter school) Quote from the original text "Students taught by teachers with at least five years' experience outperformed students with less experienced teachers, regardless of the type of school attended, but charter school students with inexperienced teachers did significantly worse than students in traditional public schools with less experienced teachers. (The impact of this finding is compounded by the fact that charter schools are twice as likely as traditional public schools to employ inexperienced teachers.)" This means that experienced teachers are better than in experienced ones (Not suprised?) but more importantly it shows us that if you try something new it is better to have an experienced teacher :)

As far as I understand, if you have a brilliant idea about the ways that the education can be implemented, you can ask for being a charter school. As a charter school, you are free from governmental regulations and obligations. However, your performance is monitored closely. In that schools, new innovative methods are tried out, and apparently inexperienced teachers are not successful at all comparing to traditional ones. This is because the experience. I remember my internship time. As an intern teacher, I had difficulty even implementing techniques that I had been taught throughout my undergraduate career. It was because concrete experiences are much more hard to accomplish that abstract ones. And self-evidently being "concretely experienced" needs time. After years and years in active teaching, teachers naturally can have the ability to integrate innovative methods in their teaching. If the innovation is surprising (like technology integration while experienced teachers might not have enough knowledge), they at least have the ability not to confuse with the new innovation, they can resist and hold on their traditional experiences. New teachers may become confused with undergraduate knowledge and innovations since both of them are still not deeply got used to.

There must be a balance between private & government schools!

Since I started my school education,I have witnessed this problem. Unfortunately it is getting worse. How come a government cannot provide satisfactory education and instruction to its people and children? How dare to push them to pay more and fulfill their own education? Turning the private courses into private schools do not change anything. And as usual, teachers and the students are worst affected from th situation.

Changing dershanes to private schools is not a solution to provide better education to society for free. The only change is that you can go to private schools with bursary or half-bursary. It means that they just moderated the money transaction. In addition, they will make teachers take exams throughout their careers which is actually not related to the conversion process. Therefore, the attempt to make dershanes extinct is a starting move that can be supported but these private schools should be converted to public schools in order to provide a high-quality education to all children for free. That is one of the most primary duties of the governments.

You are invited to the conference held in TEDU next Thursday (11.04.2013). I will be happy if you inform me before coming so that I can meet you at the very beginning. http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/ekonomi/22593138.asp

Sinem, I wasn't able to attend to this conference but I am curious to hear about your insights. Anything interesting?

I wanted to see all group members in this conference. It was a second episode of our visit for " Seven Schools in Finland" exhibition in Cermodern. There was a model school design with its learning hubs conducted by Canon design and Koç University. It is very unique in Turkey will be finished in 2014. All the learning environments were designed according to the students' learning. Most of the learning hubs, not classrooms, are not square or rectangle they are curvic. Outside of the school were built with the glasses in order to take advantage of the sunlight properly. School is in the area of 7000 m2 in Beykoz, İstanbul. Teachers who will be work in the school have been trained within the framework of nature of the model school, student-centered approach. As you remembered, in Cermodern I could not find the answer to the learning environment of Finland schools. This conference let me go one step further to imagine what constructivist learning environment is. The emphasis on importance of "Educational Architecture" is another issue I was enlightened. Maybe, we can attend the openning of the Model School. Thank you for your concern.

the website for the Humanistic school Sudbury Valley School located in USA, you can visit their website and explore what they do here :)

Thanks Canan. Looking forward to read some research on these schools.

I have found a book that is about the Sudbury school experience and its effects. the book is not available online unfortunately, only some pages of it: http://books.google.com.tr/books/about/Legacy_of_Trust.html?id=VYMoow2eSI4C&redir_esc=y

It is another controversial issue that the graduates who have associate degree regarding pre-school education can complete their full bachelor's degree with such system "2+2".

Actually, other countries such as Austria, South Korea and Germany has an issue that most of preschool teacher comes from 2 year vocational school. There are a lot of graduates of pre-school education from the faculties of education, though. To be optimistic, most of the pre-school teachers' education level will be higher not qualitatively maybe but quantitatively.

Some useful explanations and examples for humanistic environment in a school regarding curriculum, methods and facilities

Burcu, thank you for sharing. I must confess that I did not understand the difference between humanism and neo humanism:). They seemed almost the same to me. In the movie, children are running in the environment, observing the world, helping people, establishing love and trust with peers and etc. And their ages are small. I support the idea that small children should be made aware of their uniqueness. However, when they grow up, we will have to show them science, math, history and etc. The bulk of knowledge in the world and in our education might unable school to continue humanism in education. Actually, it means that especially for higher graders, we should use humanism as an element in classrooms, not a whole teaching strategy since as wee from the video, creating humanistic classroom is not feasible at all and may not be affordable for higher number of students. In the video they said that firstly they "choose" students. It means that, it is a private school. For private school, one can create almost % 100 percent humanistic environment. However, in public schools, teachers have to integrate humanistic elements into predetermined educational environments.

"Dinçer.., serbest kıyafet sayesinde çocukların yeteneklerinin ön plana çıkacağını ve özgüven kazanacaklarını belirtti." this is a part of the newsderived from this link: http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/25402921/ Ministery believes it will be useful for our country. I wanna ask to him "Is it real?". Also, we will have two different generation in two or third decades; one of them are doormat, the other one is jakanapess and provincial, I think.

The previous policy, when students required to wear school uniform, was still unsuccesful since students' shoes or shirts(gömlek) made difference among social classes of students. The new policy will increase this gap. Although wearing a school uniform seems to similarize students psychologically, this negative aspect can be ignored when the danger of social class imposition is considered. In my opinion, instead of requiring parents to buy school uniform theirselves, school boards should provide them with shoes also, just as they provide school books. While this will reduce class differention, the gap still can not be closed completely since students, for example, will buy different foods in line with their allowance. However, decreasing gap as much as possible is stilll more valuable than free clothes permission.

I have no positive attitude towards this application, children at school age always, especially in middle schools, have tendencies to criticize their friends according to their different appearance, different accents they use etc. Clothing is one of them. Now, equal opportunity for education is diminished. Children who even can not afford to pay school fee or price for textbooks may not want to come to school. What about Japanese culture.They still use uniform in schools, they are successfull. I think government tries to change the daily hot topics of Turkey.

I completely agree. I think dressing children like they are in military and having strict rules is wrong but with this new system so many new problems come up. I think -as always- this change have not been thought well.

I am not totally sure about annually students school leaving rates (from elementary school to secondary school) but thousands of students (esp. girls) left their schools, unfortunately.

Sinem, this is such an important number and a big problem in Turkey. Now, researchers are trying to identify the reasons for dropout and taking measures to prevent that happening in other countries. Yet, this is such an under-researched area in Turkey.

on a report published in 2011, I remember reading a statement that goes like 40 - 45 of 15 year-olds do not go to school regularly in Turkey! I hadn't expected such a percentage!

Science fields do not seem famous any more.

The important point in this case is that only girls who study for A-level physics are the ones who came from Girls' schools. It means that as the text stated, mix schools have a kind of characteristic that stereotype the physics as if it was boys' area. However, in my opinion, that's not true. Unless a job does not require so much muscles, it can be handled by both males and females. In physics, the brain, intelligence, and the disciplined work is necessary which are highly available in human beings, not just only in males.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/9609566/Girls-put-off-studying-science-in-mixed-gender-schools-says-headmistress.html Another news related to this!

It is a high school which has learner centered curriculum and also multiple intellegences is the corncern of this school especially visiual and artistic component of the theory. Interdisciplinary and vertically integrated curriculum was prepared. You can see a pure example of this curriculum.

Also check some other videos on new kinds of schools. Perhaps some connections can be made to the humanism week.

"a small library of nine valuable books that will help Ph.D. students do serious work-as well as helping supervisors do a solid job in supervising… These books can help to teach and develop good research habits, habits of mind and habits of behavior."

Dincer, I am glad you shared these resources here. They definitely help grad students to make this challenging journey an enjoyable one. I plan to give a workshop on "how to survive in graduate school" in the near future if I manage to find some time to do so.

I'll be the first one to join that workshop :)

"impact of technology" part made me think that using technology in education is not valuable without how to use it. The project FATİH is generally taken a big step of using technology in state schools. "What is the cost?" "Are they necessary?" "Will our teachers use it?" are most asked questions. However, "How to use it?" is rare. Here with the word "use" I don't refer to running the devices. I mean the way technology be used in accordance to the educational objectives. As Chomsky says, without knowing what to do, using educational technology effectively is difficult.

There were several points that got my attention in this video. The first one was Chomsky's sentence saying that education had a value in itself. The purpose of it was to create "better" human beings, not bigger human capital for money. At this point, he opposed to idea that all generations should be given enough knowledge about math and science in order to increase people with scientific knowledge that will lead to more money income. Rather, education should foster the ideas of being independent in thoughts, being creative, having the ability and willingness to pursue one's own interest, and learning to learn on one's own. The second one was the analogy that Chomsky used. He made an analogy between technology and a hammer. He said that with a hammer you can either construct a building or smash a school down. This is about how you use the hammer, and it is the same with technology. Thus, it is more important that for what purpose we will use the technology than simply how to use technology. The last one was about achievement tests. Chomsky said that tests do not have so much value. You can pass a test after studying hard for about 3 weeks. Nevertheless, it does not mean that you will remember even the names of the topics that was covered in the exam after 3 weeks of the exam. That's why exploration, self learning, project-based learning and formative assessment is much more important and promising compared to achievement tests.

A friend of mine has been in Finland as a teacher. I will share the anecdote she told us. While she was in her first weeks, she gave homework since it is holiday tomorrow, I think she exaggerated the giving homework. Classroom teacher came near to her and said Seçil, what are you doing? Tomorrow is holiday, they need to rest. That's why I am very interested in.

Sinem, thanks for sharing. This is also another related article on Finnish Educational system http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/46581035.pdf

Another video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwD1v73O4VI

This is the biggest problem of universities and It should be solved as soon as possible. what is wrong with these faculty, are students worng with chosing them or are lecturer wrong whilw working for them or other else???

I think we have really problem about the role of arts&scince faculty. they are supposed to prepare students to be scientists or instructors but not teachers. however, when we look at capacity of these faculties make us think that Turkey has most crowded scientist population in the world! I think for arts&science faculty we need increase in quality but decrease in numbers of capacity.

The mission and vision of the arts and science faculties should be presented clearly to high school students or to people who are about to make a decision about a department. Unfortunately, being a university graduate is perceived like a rare feature so most of the high school graduates try to enter a university avoiding the profession and department. Also, the students who hold a BS degree of a department of arts and science faculty should have given more opportunities, like scholarships or job opportunities, so that they will be able to continue their graduate education in a arts and science faculty.

An article on Turkish National Eduactional Ideology

thank you for sharing this source

Bilge, thank you for the post. It was an interesting topic. I will consider to have the book. In Turkey, after military coup on September the 12th in 1980, the military government introduced some important changes about religious education. Before military government period, schools had offered Religion Lesson as elective and Moral Knowledge Lesson as compulsory. The military government combined the two lessons and decided to be taught in primary and secondary schools compulsorily. However, as it is mentioned in the article, this decision leaded to an Islamization of our education. In my opinion, religious education is important. However, instead of emphasizing only one religion, students should be made aware of other religions and cultures and be tolerant to all of them. They should be thought that having a different religion is not a dangerous phenomenon. Such thoughts have been more and more important after 11th September attack to World Trade Center in the USA.

This is a lesson plan I prepared during my last year of college while I was taking school experience course and attending a public school as an intern. My proffessor Jale Çakıroğlu also liked this lesson plan very much and published it in her book named "Bilimin Doğası ve Öğretimi". Moreover, I also implemented it this semester with preservice teachers at METU. I took activity from http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/gr.fs.fd.html and adapted it into Turkish. I also made some changes to make it more appropriate for 6th graders. In this activity, students are active all the time. The teacher only provides them the required materials and answer their quesions to guide them. The students work in small groups to learn the nature of science aspects with an acitivity where they act as they are scientists. The evaluation is process based not product based and this is clearly explained to the students. Since I prepared this lesson plan, actually implemented it and saw that it worked perfectly I would not change anything, but I always welcome your suggestions. :))

Gamze, thanks for sharing the lesson plan. This is an exemplary lesson plan and let's talk about it in class.

7 schools from Finland.

Görüşmek üzere.

Just a moment from todays meeting: https://plus.google.com/photos/100618985435009225362/albums/5856011792223337681?authkey=CIzX7f7dxuvPMw

"We are reinventing education," declares Agarwal. "This will change the world."

Dinçer, thanks for sharing. I support the idea that traditional schools should be supported by technology. However, in my opinion, technology should not be used as a total substitute of traditional campus-based education. By stating that, I do not support idea that technology can not offer the effectiveness of content transfer to students. Rather, it offers a wide range of opportunities to enhance learning. However, in my opinion, we should not separate people from each other anywhere in the world. The long term effects of technology and mass city life is not clear yet. At least, we know about depressions and diseases because of long term stress crises. Thus, today's schools should also reteach people to be together. To put it differently, we should use technology for "better learning together".