The opinions of parents on the implications of the primary school (1-5 grades) curriculum

Abstract

A complete success in implementing a curriculum mainly depends on teaching activities at schools and the parents' support of the curriculum at home. Therefore, it can be claimed that the views of parents on the implementation of a curriculum play a very vital role.. Nevertheless, there is a great gap in curriculum evaluation studies that scrutinize the parents' views on the curriculum implementation. The main purpose of the present study was to figure out the parents' views on the primary school curriculum (I-S) started to put into practice during the 2005-2006 academic year. Within the context of a qualitative research method, a critical case sampling technique was used in the present study. The sample was consisted of 226 (206 mother and 20 father) middle class parents who have similar socio-economic and cultural background and whose children were enrolled in a primary school in the city center of Eskisehir, Turkey. The data of the research were gathered through a questionnaire, consisting of four open-ended questions, at the end of the 2005-2006 academic year. Analyses included descriptive statistics. In view of the findings of the present study, it can be concluded that the current curriculum received more negative comments, especially on its incompatibility with the secondary school placement exam (OKS), deficient information in its course books, and its ineffectual enforcement of handwriting. In terms of a few positive feedbacks, parents stated that it facilitated their children to become eager to learn, forced them to inquire, and helped them gain self-confidence. Moreover, parents believed that the current curriculum was more practicable when it is compared to the previous one based mostly on memorization. With reference to the gathered views of the parents, it can be claimed that parents could support and ratify the current curriculum as long as its unavailing sections are emendated.