A School-Based Curriculum Development for the Teaching Principles and Methods Course

The purpose of this study is to develop a school-based curriculum for the Teaching principles and methods course. The study was designed as action research. In this context, the implementation process was carried out in a 14-week period with the participation of 36 sophomore students taking the Teaching principles and methods course at a State University, Faculty of Education, Department of Classroom Teaching, in the fall semester of the academic year 2014/2015. Observations, interviews and document analysis were used to collect data. According to the findings, it was observed that the problems encountered in the implementation process were mainly associated with the insufficiency of the time allocated to the course for all learning outcomes in the guideline draft that directed the action plans, the functional implementation of peer assessment process, and the seating arrangement within the group. Most of these problems were tackled in the action research process so that the difficulties that students had during the course decreased, while the number of participants who found the implementations satisfactory increased.