Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
HITIT THEOLOGY JOURNAL, cilt.22, sa.2, ss.762-780, 2023 (ESCI)
Throughout history, people of different faiths have encountered each other and experienced sharing common space and life opportunities. However, with the spread of globalization, especially the increase in communication and transportation opportunities, this experience has intensified. This mobility brought together individuals of different faiths more frequently and made it even more necessary for them to share a common ground. This situation has affected religious education as well as many other fields, and has given religious education new duties and responsibilities. Through religious education, more systematic searches and approaches have been tried to be developed in order to have information about the religions living in the world and to get to know the people who believe in these religions. In Turkey, different religions have started to be included in the curricula of religion courses since 1956. Especially with the inclusion of Religious Culture and Ethical Knowledge (RCEK) among the compulsory courses and the emphasis on the concept of culture in this course, religions other than Islam have been included in the curriculum in a more systematic way. In this context, the subjects related to other religions are included in the 11th and 12th grade contents of the RCEK curriculum, which was updated in 2018 and is still valid. Accordingly, Judaism and Christianity are covered in the last unit of the 11th grade, and Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism are covered in the last unit of the 12th grade within the scope of Indian and Chinese religions. The curriculum emphasizes the development of an objective, scientific and descriptive teaching style of these religions, and adopts an understanding of presenting them according to their own sources and understanding of knowledge. The learning outcomes in the units include the summaries of the birth and development process of each religion. The aim of this study is to examine the subjects related to religions other than Islam in the RCEK courses and the teaching of these subjects according to the views of the teachers. The absence of any field research on religions in the curriculum and approaches to teaching these religions makes the study important. In this study, case study design, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. One-on-one interviews were conducted with 8 teachers selected from 7 regions of Turkey as the working group. Questions were directed in a semi-structured interview form. The answers were subjected to content analysis by the researchers and 6 themes were revealed. These themes are the necessity of including other religions in the curriculum, the content of these religions, student attitudes, teacher attitudes, learning status and problems encountered in the processing of the subjects. When the results obtained from the data are examined, it is revealed that the teachers mostly consider it necessary to include the subjects of other religions in this course. Teachers state that the content on other religions is covered objectively in both the curriculum and the textbook, supported by scientific data and in accordance with the sources of the religions themselves. According to the teachers, students who take this course are eager and curious to learn about other religions, however they try to understand and evaluate these religions in the context of their own beliefs. Teachers have a defensive attitude towards their own religion and an objective and tolerant attitude towards other religions. Although the importance of using different methods and techniques in the teaching of other religions is appreciated, it is determined that the teachers cannot employ other teaching methods than the traditional verbal lecture method. The teaching materials are the course book, interactive boards and various audio-visual tools. Finally, the lack of readiness of the students, the inability to give satisfactory answers to some questions, and the fact that these courses are in the last units of the last two stages of secondary education are identified as the problems encountered.