Multicultural education in Turkish social studies curriculum and textbooks

Abstract

Multicultural education is an educational approach that is guided by cultural components and is based on cultural diversity. Students are expected to gain skills and values in the education process with the social studies course, such as accepting cultural diversity, respecting human rights, and assessing different perspectives and ideas, all of which are crucial in multicultural education. From this perspective, it is clear that this notion of education is intertwined with the social studies course. Integrating a multicultural education approach into the social studies curriculum and textbooks is viewed as critical. This paper aims to determine the status of the multicultural education approach in both social studies curriculum and textbooks. The study employed the document analysis approach, which is one of the qualitative research methodologies. As data sources, the research used the 2018 social studies course curriculum as well as social studies textbooks for 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th grade. The paper attempted to establish the status of how multicultural education is included in the curriculum and social studies textbooks. The results of the study demonstrate that the multicultural education approach is represented in the curriculum, that the multicultural education approach in textbook texts is consistent with acquisitions, but that the activities are lacking.

Keywords

• multicultural education
• social studies curriculum
• social studies textbook