Examining the instructional technologies and strategies used in the village institutes and their applications into today’xxs educational settings

Historically the Village Institutes was one of the important educational movement conducted in rural area in Turkey. The purpose of their establishment was raising teachers and professional staff such as health officers, forging and technicians to enhance the villages in terms of cultural and socio-economical aspects. In the institutes, the term “learning in work (iş içinde öğrenme)” was highlighted. Students learn by doing in real life activities and construct their own knowledge by experiencing it actively. Moreover, they have responsibilities of their own learning. These are some of the features of realization of learning process in the village institutes. When we think about these features, they are the main concerns of today’s educational settings as well. The aim of this study is to determine which instructional technologies and strategies were used in the Village Institutes and argumentation of whether or not these strategies can be applied into current educational system to foster learning and solve educational problems. This qualitative study includes examination of a number of articles exist in Academic Search Complete (ASC), Web of Science, Science Direct, and Google Scholar databases with regard to Village Institutes. Results showed that various instructional technologies and strategies were used in these institutes. In the review, strategies were determined as learning by doing, constructivism (constructivist learning environment), communities of practice/situated learning, individualized learning, and distance education. In the village institutes, these strategies were applied successfully. Examining how they were used in institutes provided some hints to apply them into current educational system. These hints are, providing real-life related activities to apply what students learn, making problem, case and project main part of the class activities, designing classrooms by considering constructivist approach, being cognitive apprenticeship, creating learning communities in schools and providing vocational guidance to choose best fit in earlier levels of education