Abstracts - Earli

L331 August 2007 11:00 - 12:20Room: PP3Poster SessionChair:Poster sessionEdina Caprez-Krompák, University of Zurich, SwitzerlandTeacher education accreditation in Turkey: Adaptation of European and American models in anEU candidate nationGary M. Grossman, Arizona State University, USAMargaret K. Sands, Bilkent University, TurkeyBarbara Brittingham, New England Association of Schools and Colleges, USASince its founding eight decades ago, Turkey has emphasized education as a key to economic,social and political development. For fully half of that time, it has aspired to membership in theEuropean community. In this context, Turkey has made a major effort to upgrade and modernizethe Turkish educational system. One of those reforms, perhaps the one most crucial to the longtermeffectiveness of many of the other efforts in education, has been a transformation of thenation’s approach to training teachers. These reforms have included curriculum reform,restructuring university faculties of education, and the development of accreditation processes toevaluate the quality of teacher training programs. With regard to accreditation, these efforts havebeen largely concerned with adapting foreign models to the Turkish situation. It has now been sixyears since the completion of both the World Bank-funded National Education DevelopmentProject (NEDP) and its parallel reform in requiring all Turkish faculties of education to attend tocommon criteria for training teachers. In 2003-2004, a major study of the effects of the reforms ofTurkish teacher education was conducted, one portion of which included an evaluation of theprogress toward implementing accreditation. This paper examines the effectiveness of this recenteffort in teacher education reform in Turkey, specifically efforts to implement European andAmerican approaches to accreditation, from the point-of-view of teacher educators . It evaluatesfactors that are drawn from literature in an effort to define the bases of attitude differences in theTurkish teacher education community, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data analyticformats. It also discusses educational reform efforts in the Turkish educational system withspecific reference to Turkey’s EU aspirations. Finally, it examines the theoretical implications forthe modernization of teacher education in an institutional context, particularly as it concerns‘importing’ approaches from abroad.Evaluation of structured knowledge of a test sample by using concept mapsIris Trojahner, Dresden University of Technology, GermanyBärbel Fürstenau, Dresden University of Technology, GermanyAn important aspect of the ability to successfully meet complex demands in a particular context isa structured knowledge base. Still, what persons know cannot be directly assessed by an externalobserver. It is therefore required to apply adequate psychological data collection and evaluationmethods. Suitable methods for this purpose are concept maps, because their form of datarepresentation corresponds with the characterisation of knowledge as relational system and agreeswith current models of the semantic memory. The technique of concept mapping is not new at all.Amongst others it is used for assessing and evaluating data, especially structured knowledge of– 653 –