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An Evaluation of the “Computer Technology andProgramming” Curriculum in the Vocational HigherEducation System in TurkeyOktay C. AdiguzelCigdem S. CardakAnadolu UniversityEskisehir, TurkeyAbstractThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the “ComputerTechnology and Programming” curriculum offered at vocationalcolleges with a focus on the goals of the curriculum and studentthoughts. Document analysis and semi-structured interviews wereconducted to gather the data. Results revealed that there weremainly four problematic issues related to the “Computer Technologyand Programming” curriculum. These were: poor quality ofeducation, inadequacy of industry-based education, limited areas ofspecialization, and poor environment and inadequate opportunities.Results were discussed extensively and recommendations wereoffered regarding the structural problems of vocational colleges andthe “Computer Technology and Programming” curriculum.BackgroundThe main goal of vocational and technical education is to helpindividuals to become knowledgeable, skillful, practically proficient,Oktay C. Adiguzel is an Assistant Professor of Curriculum andDevelopment in Education in the Department of Educational Science ofEducation at Anadolu University in Turkey. He can be reached atocadiguzel@anadolu.edu.tr.Cigdem S. Cardak is a research assistant at Anadolu University, Turkey.She can be reached at csbelikusakli@anadolu.edu.tr.Volume 45Number 3612009

62JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL TEACHER EDUCATIONand to carry out essential tasks of the job. Its basic function is toenable individuals to earn money, and thus to contribute to thesociety in social and economical terms (Alkan, 1999). With thisfunction, vocational and technical education has the power toinfluence the industrial and economical growth of the country.Therefore, developed countries put special emphasis on vocationaland technical education at the secondary and higher education levelwithin their education system. Developing countries spend greatefforts to improve vocational and technical education for the purposeof increasing the quality of the workforce which is necessary for therapid development of the society and for a more powerful economy(Saglam & Adiguzel, 2007).The struggle of Turkish industry to participate in the globalworld market has substantially increased the importance of theinstitutions of vocational higher education. It is of vital importancefor the Turkish economy to train the workforce that will keep upwith the current developments and that has professional skills andknows the business world well. This trained workforce will helpTurkey to follow up the technology which is rapidly-renewed andconstantly-developing parallel to the developments in science. It willalso enable the Turkish economy to compete with the developedcountries in the global world market.On the other hand, vocational and technical education in Turkeyis neither qualitatively nor quantitatively at a desired level in termsof secondary and higher education. In the academic year of 2005–2006, the number of students at the secondary level of vocational andtechnical education constituted only 32% of the total number ofstudents from all educational institutions (Higher Education Council,2006).In Turkey, students graduated from primary school (8 year)attend one of the schools of general education or vocational-technicaleducation at the secondary level. However, they have to choose theirschool as a result of their success in the Entrance Exam forSecondary Education Schools organized by the Ministry of NationalEducation throughout the country. The duration of secondaryeducation is four years. General education, the basic goal of which isto prepare students for academic higher education, is given in general

An Evaluation of Curriculum63high schools and in the foreign-language-based schools, scienceoriented schools, social-sciences-oriented schools and fine-artsoriented schools. Vocational-technical education, the basic goal ofwhich is to prepare students for jobs and for two-year vocationalcolleges in higher education, is given in vocational high schools andtechnical high schools. Those who want to attend a higher educationinstitution are required to be successful in the Higher EducationEntrance Exam organized in the whole country in June every year.Parallel to their secondary education, students choose one of suchareas as Turkish-Mathematics, Mathematics-Science, SocialSciences and Foreign Language in the Higher Education EntranceExam. According to their score types of the related area, studentswho succeed in the exam choose a certain number of majors, andthen, are placed in one of the higher education programs by theCenter for Student Selection and Placement Center according tostudents’ performance on the test and their choice of majors (Saglam,2006).Earlier in 2007, seventeen new universities were founded inTurkey, in addition to a total of ninety-nine universities, of whichsixty-eight are state universities, twenty-five are foundationuniversities, and six belong to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and theMinistry of National Defense. Except for the newly-establisheduniversities, state universities and those of the foundations currentlyinclude 591 faculties that deliver four-year academic and vocationalprograms. In addition to these faculties 179 teach at four-year collegesand 474 teach at two-year vocational colleges (Higher EducationCouncil, 2006).Vocational Colleges in Turkey have been included into theuniversity system by Higher Education Law published in 1981. Thefoundational aim of the vocational colleges might be defined aseducating vocational and technical secondary school graduates in theirstudy fields; therefore, growing them up as high qualified workforcewho could adapt himself/herself to scientific and technologicaldevelopments work life needs and achieve qualified production.According to the Higher Education Law, the number of vocationalcolleges has increased noticeably from the administrative, financial,educational perspectives since 1982. The data of 2005-2006 academic

64JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL TEACHER EDUCATIONyear reveals that, 474 Vocational Colleges in the Higher EducationSystem have been providing vocational education. In vocationalcolleges, 262 two-year vocational college programs (e.g., science,technical, accounting, finance, management, law, business, tourism,agriculture and health) have been implemented (Higher EducationCouncil, 2006). Approximately 400,000 students have been attendingthese programs and this corresponds to nearly 28% of the students inthe formal higher education system. To increase this ratio, beginningfrom the 2002-2003 academic year with the help of 4702 NumberedLaw, graduates of vocational and technical secondary schools had theopportunity to attend vocational colleges without dealing with theentrance exam. With the help of the “Attendance Project withoutExamination,” it was predicted that the number of vocational collegestudents would increase. However, more students attend four yearhigher education institutions rather than two year ones. In Turkey, 138vocational colleges have closed since the request for these schools isnot enough (Higher Education Council, 2006). Factors negativelyinfluencing the request for vocational colleges were examined in twomain areas (Saglam and Adiguzel, 2007): Absence of teaching staffand environmental and hardware inadequacies.Absence of teaching staffSince vocational colleges are units within universities, the absenceof teaching staff in universities and the ill-balanced distribution ofthem within and among the institutions are generally more obvious invocational colleges. For instance, according to the statistics from theCouncil of Higher Education, in the education period of 2004-2005,the number of teaching staff working in the schools of vocationalcolleges was 5,787, and there were 56 students per instructor. Thisratio is 5 students per instructor in Germany, 10 in Belgium, 11 inHungary, 14 in Holland and 20 in England (Higher Education Council,2005). Qualitative and quantitative deficiencies of teaching staff invocational colleges cause a decrease in the quality of education andconsequently these effects expectations of management, education andeconomy domains from vocational colleges and the appealing of thesecolleges negatively.

An Evaluation of Curriculum65Environmental and Hardware InadequaciesDespite the fact that vocational colleges are connected to theuniversities, most of them are located outside of the universitycampus. Especially in recent years, due to political reasons, manyschools of vocational colleges have been placed in smaller districtsof cities where the university campuses are not found. These districtsare generally 50-200 kilometers away from the city centers. Sincethe majority of the university professors live in the city centers wheretheir universities are located, they do not prefer to travel and teachsome of the classes in the vocational colleges. For this reason, theneed of teaching staff for vocational college is supplied from theteachers working in vocational and technical secondary schools inthe region. Another important problem of the vocational colleges insmall residential districts is that they don’t have enough laboratories,workshops, areas for application, course materials and tools, andtechnological equipment, all of which are necessary for teaching.Just as in the report of “I. National Vocational CollegesAdministrators Meeting”, these problems of vocational collegesrelated to the technological inadequacies were indicated. In thisreport, it is specified that in most of vocational colleges laboratorieswere not equipped with modern technologies (Higher EducationCouncil, 2004).With the “Development of Curriculum of Vocational CollegesProject” prepared by the Ministry of National Education,developmental studies to solve the problems related to legal andorganizational and educational dimensions have been started.Accordingly in the direction of the needs of vocational colleges andindustry, 15 new curricula of vocational colleges have beendeveloped in six months with the help of 130 experts and have beenimplemented since 2002. One of these curricula, “ComputerTechnology and Programming,” was planned to be a two-yearprogram consisting of 28 credit hours a week in a semester. Thosewho graduated from the programs of “Information Processing”,“Computer”, “Computer Hardware”, “Computer Management”,“Computer Management Technician” and “Computer Software” at

66JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL TEACHER EDUCATIONthe vocational and technical high schools can attend this program.The program was intended to train computer technicians who areknowledgeable about software production, (PC, network and theinternet), equipment maintenance (hardware) and about theestablishment and management of computer networks, yet who arespecialized only in one of these areas having more theoreticalinformation than a technician and practically more skillful than anengineer. The “Computer Technology and Programming” curriculumis a combination of the previous curricula of “Computer Operationand Technician”, “Computer Programming”, “Computer Hardware”,“Computer Technology and Programming”, and “Computer andInformation Systems.”PurposeThe aim of this study was to evaluate the curriculum andfunction of “Computer Technology and Programming”. There arethree reasons for choosing this program to evaluate. The first reasonis that information and communication technologies have becomemore widespread. In this fast developing world, it is highly importantto educate a qualified workforce in Turkey to reach a dynamic,competitive, and economic structure. Second, this curriculum is oneof the curricula developed and implemented within the scope of thecurriculum development studies. Therefore, the operation of thiscurriculum serves as an example for other curricula. Third, becauseof high demand in the industry for a qualified workforce related tocomputer technology and programming, the curriculum of“Computer Technology and Programming” is preferred more bystudents than the other curricula of two-year vocational colleges.In the scope of this study, the aim was to answer the followingquestions:1. Is the curriculum of Computer Technology andProgramming consistent with the aims of the curriculum?2. Do the problems indicated for other vocational collegesapply for the curriculum of Computer Technology andProgramming?

An Evaluation of Curriculum673. What are the views of the students regarding the institutionthey were attending and the curriculum of ComputerTechnology and Programming?MethodParticipantsThe study was carried out on the second year studentsattending the program of “Computer Technology and Programming”in Porsuk Vocational College of Anadolu University, Eskisehir, inthe academic year of 2006–2007. Second year students were selectedfor the purpose of the study since it was thought that they wouldhave extensive knowledge about the curriculum and be able toevaluate it. Participants were students with different academicachievement levels who signed the consent form and agreed toparticipate in the study. The students were separated into threegroups based on their achievement level (Low level: GPA lower than2.50; Moderate level: GPA between 2.50 and 3.00; High level: GPAhigher than 3.00). Only four students in each academic achievementlevel agreed to be interviewed voluntarily. Therefore, interviewswere done with a total of 12 students totally.Research DesignA qualitative research method was used. Within the scope of thequalitative research method, the data were gathered through theexamination of the written documents and semi-structuredinterviews.Data CollectionDocument analysis. In order to collect the research data, thecurriculum of “Computer Technology and Programming” invocational colleges was examined with the method of descriptiveanalysis.

68JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL TEACHER EDUCATIONSemi-structured interviews. There are different taxonomiesrelated to the interviews which are a type of data collection techniquein qualitative studies. Fielding (1996) defines interviews as“standardized”, “semi-standardized” and “non-standardized”. LikeFielding (1996), Minichiello, Aroni, Timewell, and Alexander,(1990) also define three types of interviews. The first type, structuredinterviews, consist of questions and answer choices decided beforethe interviews. The second type of interview, semi-structuredinterviews, involve open-ended questions under main topic.Participants are directed to answer the questions freely and then isinterviewed deeply. The interviewer previously prepared thequestions related to the interview topics, asked these questionsduring the interview and directed explanatory questions, whennecessary, in order to clarify the answers given to the questions. Thelast type of interview is unstructured interviews in which there is noclassification of questions and any other classification (Punch, 2005).According to these taxonomies in this study the semi-structuredinterview type was chosen to collect data on interview topics decidedbefore the interviews.The interviews lasted 25-35 minutes on average, and all theinterviews were audio-recorded. Prior to the interviews, theparticipants were asked for oral and written permission. During theinterviews, several questions were directed to the issues of“information about the structure and the content of the program of“Computer Technology and Programming”. For this issue, thefollowing questions were asked:Questions Related to the Quality of Education: “What areyou thinking about the relationship and wholeness between yourlearning in secondary education schools and in vocationalcolleges?” “How is the opportunity of practice in courses relatedwith software and hardware?” “What is the ratio of theoreticalcourse hours and applied course hours?”Questions Related to the Environment and Facilities: “Whatare the difficulties/limitations/problems related to the facilities ofthe colleges?”

An Evaluation of Curriculum69Questions Related to the Specialization Fields: “Does theeducation you have here provide you a specialization in anycomputer-related fields? Could you please explain this?”Questions Related to the Organizational Structure andContent of the Industrial Education: “Related to industry-basededucation (internship), what are the problems you came acrossbefore the internship, during the internship and after theinternship?”Data analysisDocument analysis. For the analysis of the education program,evaluations were made regarding such issues as the description of theprofession, the goals of the program, the distribution of the credits ofthe compulsory and elective courses and the classification of theelective courses according to the specialization areas.Analysis of the semi-structured interviews. Descriptive analysisof data gathered through semi-structured interviews was run as!"##" %& '(#)* ,-.& /& 0".1)*2& 34456& 78#98:81& /& ; 1 - 2& 344?@A& '5@&all the interviews were transcribed into texts; (2) depending on thedata obtained and considering the related literature and theconceptual framework, a thematic frame was formed and the themesdetermined were given codes; (3) in line with the thematic frame,data were read and the frequencies of the themes were found. Thethemes determined were classified under main headings. In thisphase, for the reliability of the thematic frame formed of the data,two researchers work independently on the whole data set andproduced themes individually, then they worked together and cameto consensus on the themes and frequencies of data; (4) the resultswere supported by direct quotations.ResultsIn order to find answers to the question of “Is the ComputerTechnology and Programming consistent with its goals?” therelationship between the goals of the curriculum and the distributionof the courses were examined. Results of document analysis

70JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL TEACHER EDUCATIONdepending on the description stated in the curriculum about acomputer technician that, “She or he has more theoreticalinformation than a technician and more experience in practice thanan engineer”, the course hours allocated to the applied andtheoretical courses in the program were examined. In addition to this,considering the objective stated in the curriculum that “trainingcomputer technicians who are knowledgeable about software (PC,network and the internet), equipment maintenance (hardware) andabout the establishment and management of computer networks, yetwho are specialized only in one of these areas,” analysis was maderegarding the alternative specialization areas students were providedwith. The results of this analysis are presented in Table 1.Table 1 shows that 69% of the curriculum was found to beallocated to theoretical courses and 31% to applied courses.Therefore, although experience in practice is quite significant invocational colleges and this significance is frequently stated in thecurriculum, it was revealed that the applied courses have a verysmall proportion in the curriculum. Moreover, according to Table 1,72 hours of the total course hours were allocated to the compulsorycourses and 36 hours to the elective courses. When the distributionof the compulsory and elective courses in the curriculum wereexamined, it was observed that there were not enough alternatives forspecialization in different computer-related areas and thatspecialization in an area tended to be achieved through electivecourses. When the elective courses given in the curriculum for thepurpose of specialization in a computer related area were examined,it was seen that 60% of the elective courses were in thespecialization area of software, 70% was found to be theoreticalcourses and 30% were allocated to the applied courses. Hence, it wasconcluded that there was not a wide range of elective courses in thecurriculum and studen

“Computer”, “Computer Hardware”, “Computer Management”, “Computer Management Technician” and “Computer Software” at . 66 JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL TEACHER EDUCATION the vocational and technical high schools can attend this program. The program was intended to train computer technicians who are knowledgeable about software production, (PC, network and the internet), equipment .

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