Comparative Study of 2007 Turkish and 2008 German Nordrhein Westfalen State Gymnasium Chemistry Curricula

This comparative study aims at making a comparison between turkish and german nordrhein westfalen state gymnasium chemistry curricula in term of general sucructure, basic philosophy, approaches adopted, content, learning-teaching environment and assesment techniques. the comparison has been done descriptively and data were collected in qualitative approaches. the data about the turkish chemistry curriculum was collected through curriculum documents and semi-structured interview with four chemistry teachers during the fall semester of 2011-2012. the data about gymnasium chemistry curriculum was collected throught curriculum documents, teachers questionnaires which composed of open ended questions with four teachers, unstructured observations were carried out and semi-structure interview was made with four students in these teachers’ classess during the fall semester of 2010-2011 in germany. the data collected at the end of the study were subject to descriptive analysis. according to the results of descriptive analysis, some differences were observed in the term of the approaches adopted, basic philosophy and the order of the content in turkish and german nordrhein westfalen state gymnasium chemistry curricula. while learning-teaching process and assesment techniques are more or less similar in the chemistry curriculums in both countries use of laboratory method was more dominant in germany. as a result, there are some structural differences between turkish and german nordrhein westfalen gymnasium chemistry curricula and also some differences were emerging implementation of the currricula into practice depending on the infrastrucure, cultural properties in national education and examination systems.