TR Education System & Educational Policies

Rooxbar

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I want to know why,enlighten me.
[This is off-topic response to TR_123456, but thought I might answer publicly; feel free to move it wherever it's appropriate]

It's quite simple; you cannot teach something you don't know yourself. It's about the quality of teachers and their absolute ignorance about pedagogical methods which work in language acquisition (which implies the teacher's instructors themselves didn't emphasize or know the working methods). I once told a Ministry of National Education bureaucrat that "people always complain about the educational system. There's no such thing as the educational system." It's kind of a rhetorical thing to say, but what I mean is that the problem with education is almost always a country's ability to train quality teachers, keeping pace with population growth; not "student per classroom", examination procedures, textbooks, etc. Those are factors, but minor ones. A great teacher will churn out competent students even if they work with the world's most horrendous curriculum, a horrible textbook, awful examination procedures which incentivize all the wrong things, a 100 student classroom, with leaky roof and no heating system and a broken blackboard.

So you have to look at how you train teachers, and pinpoint where the problem lies. Hacettepe biology teacher training program is the highest ranking in biology afaik. You only need a placement of around 200k. It's not hard to imagine the kind of student these teacher training programs attract in Turkey. And that guy becomes your future teacher, and I'm taking the best example here (the majority attend much worse programs with much lower quality instructors). Now imagine the kind of enthusiasm that guy and his teachers in Hacettepe or Balıkesir have to train this 200k placement student (or in Balıkesir's case probably 400k) to be a biology teacher in inner Anatolia for starvation wages. You can imagine the kind of education that person gets; and the enthusiasm he has for his prospects and his job and the students he will train. There's no serious-mindedness in this business. And as it should be obvious, this is a vicious cycle. You have to break the cycle with drastic measures.

Several countries have done this. The way to break the cycle is to train the teachers with better instructors. First step is to discover your top elite instructors. It's not easy but consensus is not hard to come by when you're talking about top 4-5 instructors in a field. After identifying your best couple of instructors based on merit and competence (their own academic career, alma mater, rhetorical abilities, the enthusiasm that they can evoke and many other factors are involved), you make sure your "teacher training programs" are unified under one umbrella, ideally creating a couple of universities only to train teachers. In this unified approach then, you take teaching program students from higher placements (at least 3x better than what it is now, imo it shouldn't be higher than 20k; the jobs should be that lucrative), and make sure teachers start to get special treatment among your public sector workers. And above all, you make sure all your teachers are instructed in their field by those best elite instructors which you selected before. Now that sounds impossible, how 3 or 4 instructors are going to teach for maybe hundreds or even a thousand or more students? Well this has been done. Courses are prepared before-hand in multimedia. The elite instructors choose assistants for the courses they have prepared and train those assistants themselves, instead of instructing directly to all teaching program applicants. Then those assistants help with the program in different classes. In this auxiliary method, you can also have a main instructor and use the prepared material as guidance and complimentary material. That's the way.
 
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Rodeo

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The thread was created to share the news on Turkish educational system and also for you(forum members) to share your views and projections related to our educational policies. They will, hopefully, contribute to our knowledge and expand our horizon.
 

Baryshx

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Only the Turkish lesson is strange. In general, "failing a class" should be brought back. According to the overall score, of course with the weight of important courses.
 

Bogeyman 

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6 Turkish universities entered the top 500 in the QS 2024 Sustainability Rankings


In the statement made by the Council of Higher Education, QS includes "Environmental sustainability", "Environmental impact", which includes indicators of "Environmental education and Environmental research"; "Equality", "Exchange of information", "Education impact", "Employability and outcomes" and "Health and well-being". It has prepared specially for Turkey regarding the QS 2024 Sustainability Ranking, which evaluates the performances of universities around the world according to the "Social impact" and "Governance" categories, which include factors such as "Ethics", "Recruitment practices", "Transparency", "Decision making". He forwarded the report to the Council of Higher Education.

According to the report, 6 Turkish universities were among the top 500 universities in the world and 17 were among the top 1000.

In the first thousand, Istanbul Technical University (ITU) (221), Middle East Technical University (METU) (224), Boğaziçi University (335), Yıldız Technical University (405), Koç University (408), Hacettepe University (408), Gazi University ( 537), Dokuz Eylül University (556), Bilkent University (672), Erciyes University (711-720), Sabancı University (731-740), Gebze Technical University (881-900), Ankara University (941-960), Çukurova University (961-980), Selçuk University (961-980), Marmara University (981-1000), Sakarya University (981-1000).

ITU is the leader in the "Environmental sustainability" indicator

In addition to the categories, QS also ranked the best universities in the world in the indicators that form them.

In the words of the report, ITU displayed an "excellent performance" in the QS Environmental Sustainability indicator, which measures an institution's commitment to sustainability and climate strategies. ITU, which ranks 44th in the world in this indicator, was also at the top among the universities of West Asian countries.

Turkey is the only country in the region to place a university among the top 100 in the world in terms of "Equality" indicator. In the "Equality" indicator, Turkey became the best in its region with Koç University ranked 99th in the world, METU ranked 222nd and Boğaziçi University ranked 289th.

Turkey also stood out as the best country in its region in the "Information exchange" indicator, which includes the criteria of "cooperation, resource sharing and community participation". In this indicator, Turkey, which has two universities (METU-95th and Hacettepe-97th) in the top 100 in the world rankings, ranked highest in West Asia.

Three Turkish universities ranked in the top 100 in the Governance category


In the "Governance" category, where factors such as "ethics, recruitment practices, transparency and decision-making" are evaluated, three Turkish universities found themselves in the top 100 in the world rankings. Among the three universities, ITU ranked 153rd in Asia, while Bilkent and Gazi universities shared the 174th place.

In his assessment of the report, QS Senior Vice President Ben Sowter said, "Turkish universities demonstrate a strong commitment to social inclusion and collaboration. This is a commendable achievement that reflects the country's commitment to progressive educational practices." he said.

Sowter suggested that universities focus on improving their curricula and research in environmental and social sciences while strengthening their ties with industry on issues related to the quality of education, career prospects and graduate opportunities.


Full Report
 

Saithan

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While that is all good, I think it's important to compare this achievement with the other universities we have in Türkiye.

AKP established so many new universities it's necessary to keep track of them all and see how they perform. This is to ensure that they didn't build a University that gathers dust, or delivers educational level comparable with vocational school or such.

Otherwise we might end up with Universities at the standard of Grade School and baffle the world with having the youngest university students in history! straight from kindergarten.
 

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