Abstract:

The new primary education curriculum, developed according to the constructivist approach, has been adopted at all primary schools all over the country since 2005-2006 academic year by Board of Education in Turkey. This new curricular reform policy, which required major shift from a teacher-centered approach to a student-centered approach, was promoted as being a very promising reform in responding the crucial problems in primary education.

However, implementation literature proves that policy adoption does not warrant its effective implementation. Implementation as a highly complex process is affected by a number of factors. In this paper, the findings of a study which investigated the implementation of constructivist curriculum will be discussed in light of factors which affect the effective implementation of the policy.
The study findings are based on the semi-structured interviews conducted with 72 teachers working at 11 primary schools in Ankara.

Keywords:

curriculum reform, policy implementation.