New Perspectives in Science Education

STEM education has been one of the most important subjects in college entrance exams in Turkey and therefore it has been an initial target of the private school sector for decades. Through various channels, Turkish Islamic Scholar Fethullah Gulen’s and his followers schools, which are named as Gulen Inspired Schools according to different scholars [1], have achieved remarkable success in STEM education and their graduates are now among Turkey’s leaders in science and math and are very well represented at the country’s top universities, as well as in master’s and doctorate programs throughout Europe and in the United States. [2] Through the internationalization process of the movement, different Gulen inspired schools were founded outside of Turkey and they also followed the same path and expanded this type of STEM education to the world. The purpose of this paper is to examine the methodology of Gulen Inspired Schools in STEM education. A qualitative research design is used to study this issue. Semi-structured expert interviews are conducted with managers of the Gulen Inspired Schools from three continents: Europe, Africa and the US and the experts of the subject. The results show that, in addition to the full-day concept and modern facilities with science labs, these schools conducted three types of extra curricula activities such as tutoring programs for the weak students, preparing good students for science Olympiads and coaching or mentoring students [3]. These types of extra educational activities have a supporting role in the STEM education in these schools. On the other hand, the detractors of these schools described these extracurricular activities as a tool in which Gulen followers conducted indoctrination and missionary activities to gain new followers [4].  Schools defended themselves against these approaches by demonstrating the secular structure of these activities and contribution to their students. Such discussions and the controversial structure of these extra curricula activities are also analysed from different perspectives in this paper.

Keywords: Gulen inspired schools, STEM education, extra curricular activities.

References:

1. Dohrn, K. (2014). Translocal Ethics: Hizmet Teachers and the Formation of Gülen-inspired Schools in Urban Tanzania. Sociology of Islam, 233.
2. Hendrick, J. D. (2013). Gülen: the Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World, New York: New York University Press, 142.
3. Altin, M.E. (2020). Additional Educational Activities in and out of Class, Internationalization through Localization: Gülen Inspired Schools, PhD Dissertation on Faculty of Philosophy of Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf: HHU Universität Publikation Server, 161-174.
4. Tittensor, D. (2014).Conclusion: A singular Movement with a Modern-Day Mission.  The House of Services: The Gülen Movement and Islam’s Third Way, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 83.