International Journal of
Information and Education Technology

Abstract

Curriculum is a rather ambiguous term because of its nature. This ambiguousness has become even more severe due to reflections of paradigms of Information Age and its dominant phenomenon Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on education. The purpose of this study is to determine what meanings teachers attribute to curriculum, and then to assess these meanings within the literature. The study was carried out on 35 teachers in Elazig city center, Turkey. The study is a qualitative research, and the data were collected via open-ended interview forms. These data were then analyzed with content analysis and descrriptive statistical techniques. At the end of the study, it was revealed that the meanings the teachers attributed to curriculum are rather traditional, various and far from being integrity. From this, in can be said that curriculum in teachers' mind is shadowy. From a traditional perspective, this case may give birth to some problems during education process. However, this shadowy perception of teachers can turn into an advantage during the process in Information Age. Because, the teachers cannot be expected to be loyal to curriculum which they cannot make sense of. So, they can take some socio-psychological factors into consideration which curriculum do not foresee. Such an environment, in which effect of curriculum lessens for per students, is more humane, and it helps them to stay as themselves allowing them to form their own knowledge.