Parental Expectation and Religious Education in State Schools in Turkey: The Case of Imam Hatip High Schools

The goal of education is not only making students intellectually or technically knowledgeable but also trains them in virtuous settings. This involves not only building upon the young person's characteristics and socialization into the norms of society, but also some deliberate intervention in teaching and learning environments of home and school to encourage virtuous behaviour and ongoing moral development. Together with education included values of society, education is also a way of liberate persons from limitations and impositions of certain beliefs. Educators' actions either maintain or challenge the dominant ideology should be conscious and aim to liberate pupils. The purpose of this study was to seek out the reasons why parents prefer religious based schools for their children in a secular, modern Turkish Republic in spite of the fact that there have been more academic high schools for university entrance. Also the values that parents hope schools to inject their children have been investigated throughout the study. To achieve this goal, it focuses on key concerns identified in literature associated with values and parental expectations, and discussed the current context in Turkey with reference to the process of de facto situation in the world. As a result, parents included in this study who preferred to send their children to Imam Hatip High Schools (IHHS) that are serving mostly religious courses have purposefully in need of religious courses for their children.