A Key to Europe

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The project supported the development of history and citizenship education in Turkey through promoting collaborative European values such as critical awareness, mutual respect, peace, stability, and democracy.   

The project targeted three main areas:   

• Life-long learning of the professional group of history and citizenship educators, encouraging innovation in methodology and teaching from a European perspective, and to support the national discourse about the aims, role, and opportunities for school history and social studies in a modern global society;
• Intercultural dialogue through enhancing professional co-operation, communication, and networking within Turkey and beyond in order to support the increasing connectedness of the professional group with each other and with their counterparts in Europe.
• Contribute to participatory governance, supporting the newly developing history educators network and developing independent and self-sustaining professional organisations.

[su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Network widened“]The initial plan was to involve a selected network of 9 educational establishments (Schools, Teacher Training Colleges, Universities, Board of Education) from 8 cities in Anatolia and Black Sea Region. During the project this group widened towards 106 institutions representing 218 professionals from 58 cities: Adana, Adıyaman, Agri, Aksaray, Amasya, Ankara, Antalya, Baku, Balıkesir, Batman, Bingol, Bitlis, Bolu, Burdur, Bursa, Çankırı, Corum, Denizli, Diyarbakır, Edirne, Edremit, Ereğli, Erzincan, Erzurum, Eskişehir, Gaziantep, Hatay, Hendek, İstanbul, İzmir, Kahramanmaras, Karabük, Kastamonu, Kayseri, Kırıkkale, Kırklareli, Kirsehir, , Kocaeli, Konya, Korydallos, Malatya, Manisa, Mersin, Mugla, Mus, Nevşehir, Niğde, Ordu, Rize, Sakarya, Samsun, Sivas, Tekirdag, Tokat, Trabzon, Uşak, Yozgat , Zonguldak. [/su_spoiler]

The Association website was developed in 2010. It contains news, articles, announcements and reports of teacher trainings, books, etc

However Turkish bureaucratic procedures and complex political circumstances lack still to create an independent civil society friendly environment. New tools from social networks however allow professionals to operate outside the fixed parameters. Therefore, an active Facebook groupTarih Egtimice has been created in January 2012. On 30 April 2012, by the end of the project,this fast growing network had 1275 members. [/su_spoiler]

145 international delegates, representing 45 countries including Armenia, Israel, India, USA, Russia and Iceland, participating in the 19th EuroClio International Training Conference in Looking at the History through a Variety of Lenses, held in Antalya, Turkey, from 1-8 April, where the materials were launched and disseminates widely.

Project coordinator Dr Semih Aktekin is in 2011 elected as EuroClio Board Member. Project coordinator Dr Mustafa Ozturk is in 2011 asked to become member of the Editing Board of the EuroClio Bulletin, the on-line Magazine on History, Heritage and Citizenship Education. He was in 2012 invited to become EuroClio Ambassador, as acknowledgement for his contributions to implement responsible and innovative history.

Project participants and other EuroClio members became involved in Comenius school exchanges and other partnerships for example between Latvia and Turkey or Turkey- Kosovo. [/su_spoiler]

[su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Curricula“]Chief Editor Dr Huseyin Koksal and Academic Project Advisor Dr Bahri Ata were invited to participate in the revision process of the history curriculum for the facultative history classes for grade 9-12, which was finalised in 2012. [/su_spoiler]

One of the five editors of the publication, Celal Genc, was invited into the author’s group from the region of Samsun that in 2011 drafted history textbooks for grade 9-12 on request by the Turkish Ministry of National Education. [/su_spoiler]

The publication is used as basis for pre-service and initial-service training in most of the universities that have participated in the authoring of the material. [/su_spoiler]

[su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Capacity Building Training”] 7 National capacity building seminars were organised in Ankara, Antalya, Bolu, Istanbul, Kastarmanu, and Kizilcahaman on topics such as from theory to practice; possibilities of ICT for innovative History Education and working with a diversity of sources. The audience was trained by many national and 15 international (peer specialists from 6 countries: Denmark, Malta, The Netherlands, Republic of Macedonia, Russia and United Kingdom. Many participants stated in the end of the project that the training had provided them with an in-depth extra degree in the learning and teaching of history and social studies.

Sharing, discussing of experiences of using innovative approaches in history and social studies approaches is continued on a fast growing face book group Tarih Egtimice, pushing for a wider usage of innovative methodology.

42 Turkish history and social studies educators were able to participate in international capacity building events in 20 countries: Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, England, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Latvia, Macedonia, Montenegro, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Scotland and Switzerland. The trainings focused on a variety of issues such as development of on-line teaching materials, active learning, emotive history, teaching diversity, and holocaust education. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Piloting”] Piloting in classroom settings took place among 4900 students from approximately 32 cities across Turkey, carried out by the Editors of the teaching tool and the newly appointed group of Formator (in-service training) teachers. Each of them tested one or two modules in several classes. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Dissemination”] The book was disseminated to all Education Faculties, Public Libraries and Regional Education Authorities as well as all members of the Association.

By the end of the project on 30 April 2012, the Turkish version of the tool was downloaded 6285 times (from e-tarih (3102) and from the site of the Turkish History educators Association (3183) The audience is a wide variety of ‘users’ such as teacher, trainers and students. The English version has been on 30 April 2012 downloaded from all sites 150 times. The downloading was still continuing at that moment.

The English language resource book was disseminated as training material among all international participants of the 19th EuroClio International Training Conference in Looking at the History through a Variety of Lenses from 1-8 April in Antalya, Turkey. During Conference the participants visited 9 schools (3 primary, 6 secondary) and 2 University Departments (Education and History) of the Antalya region. This opportunity was used to propagate the Turkish language publication.

The English language publication was disseminated among the colleagues from the seven countries of Former Yugoslavia, which work together in the project History that Connects. How to teach sensitive and controversial issues in the countries of former Yugoslavia, developing inclusive and multi-perspective (on-line) teaching tools on the emotive history of the region from the period between 1900-1945. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Internal Assessment”] Internal peer-review assessments of the teaching tool has been carried out during a wide variety of activities. The project made use of a mixture of seminar and workshop approaches with focus on capacity building as well as on develop teaching resources. All involved played a vital role in peer assessing the materials and giving feed forward. Improved modules were again presented and reviewed in the a later workshop.

Peer reviewing took place with the group of Formator Teachers was done in partnership with Ministry of Education in Erzurum, Yalova, Antalya and with the group of Formator teachers (those that are responsible for ins-service trainer in their provinces and regional in order to cover all of Turkey).

Peer reviewing was also done during the 19th EuroClio International Training Conference in Looking at the History through a Variety of Lenses from 1-8 April in Antalya, Turkey. The workshops scored on average as high as the international workshops.[/su_spoiler]