A needs analysis of curriculum design of the human rights, citizenship, democracy and child rights course for teacher candidates

The overall aims of this study are to conduct a needs analysis of curriculum design of the “Human Rights, Citizenship and Democracy” course for the teacher candidates at the Department of Classroom Teaching and to propose a curriculum design. In this study, convergent parallel mixed methods design comprising both qualitative and quantitative data collection is used. In the qualitative aspect of the needs analysis, in-depth interviews with eight primary school teachers who taught or have been teaching the “Human Rights, Citizenship and Democracy” course in the fourth year of the primary school, three instructors from Department of Classroom Teaching at the Faculty of Education who are teaching a course with similar content and six teacher candidates registered at the 4th grade of the same department were counducted. Based on the interview results, a “Needs Analysis Questionnaire” was developed by the researchers and used for the quantitative dimension. The questionnaire is applied to 80 teacher candidates who are 3rd and 4th grade classroom teacher candidates in a a state university in Istanbul. Qualitative data were analyzed through the content analysis carried out by using NVivo11 analysis software. In the analysis of the quantitative data, a descriptive analysis was made by using SPSS.20 software package. According to results, It is seen that the teacher candidates are barely knowledgeable about the child rights; and that the teacher candidates appreciate the learning outcomes of the course design, and yet they consider themselves quite incompetent for these learning outcomes. Additionaly, the results demonstrated that an education programme on human rights, citizenship and democracy should be offered to the teacher candidates as a must course. In line with the results of the needs analysis, an education programme design model on human rights, citizenship, democracy and child rights is proposed.