THE QUALITY OF ARABIC LANGUAGE TEACHING CURRICULA IN TURKEY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE TURKISH QUALIFICATIONS FRAMEWORK

Abstract

The European Qualifications Framework (EQF) was released in 2008 by the European Parliament and the Council of Europe for Lifelong Learning purposes. Thirty-six countries that are members of or in the process of the membership to the European Union (EU) have prepared their own national qualifications framework in accordance with the EQF. In Turkey, this framework was prepared by the Vocational Qualifications Authority (MYK acronym in Turkish). The aim of the study was to examine the reflections of the Turkish Qualifications Framework (TQF) on the Arabic language teaching curricula in Turkey. Therefore, the study investigated whether Arabic language teaching curricula released by the Ministry of Education Board of Education, Turkey in 2016 and in 2018 were developed in accordance with TQF. In this qualitative study, the Document Review Method was adopted. The data were analyzed via content analysis. As a result of the study, it was observed that TQF was not aligned explicitly or implicitly to Arabic language teaching curricula. Meanwhile, in some parts the objectives were incidentally similar to the competencies in TQF, but not the same at all. The study discussed some major deficiencies, and put forward some recommendations in order to overcome them in the forthcoming Arabic language teaching curriculum studies.