Democratising Turkey through student-centred pedagogy: opportunities and pitfalls

Global reform talk on pedagogy has been converging around student-centred pedagogy (SCP) in recent decades. One of the significant appeals of this pedagogical model is its democratisation potentials. This article seeks to empirically study SCP's role in democratising learning and promoting social democratisation by taking the case of Turkey, a country whose democracy has been defined as being in acute crisis. The data are drawn from interviews with teachers and school management at eight public primary schools in Ankara. The study is mainly concerned with the potential of SCP in promoting democratic learning in classrooms, and understanding how broader social, cultural and political contexts support or impede such democratisation efforts. The paper will explore if adherence to democratic learning is more than rhetoric, particularly when serious limitations to social and political democratisation continue to persist in Turkey under the regime of the AKP.