Perceptions of Students from the Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technologies Regarding the Concept of Curriculum

In the study, the purpose was to determine the perceptions of students from the department of Computer Education and Instructional Technologies regarding the concept of curriculum. The participants of the study conducted with the phenomenology research design were 212 preservice teachers. The research data were collected via document analysis and interviews. For the analysis of the data, the inductive content analysis method was used. The results revealed that the preservice teachers perceived the concept of curriculum as a process with positive and negative features which emphasize change and development. The results also demonstrated that the participants perceived their levels of knowledge about curriculum as partly sufficient. In addition, it was found that undergraduate education has an important role in the development of these perceptions. Moreover, the results emphasized the need for making more planned and systematic regulations in relation to the functioning of curriculum studies in Turkey. Lastly, the results demonstrated that there is a need for regulations in the structure of the preservice teacher education curricula to give meaning to the concept of curriculum.