Multiculturalism in Social Studies Teaching: A Meta-Synthesis Study

Nergiz Kardaş İşler

doi:10.24106/kefdergi.740432

Abstract

Purpose: This paper aims to evaluate the findings of studies investigating multiculturalism in social studies teaching in Turkey.Studies examining the concept of multiculturalism, which belongs to an important place in the social studies course, wereanalyzed, and the findings related to what was focused most, what was needed and the subjects that had never beeninvestigated before were presented.Design/Methodology/Approach: The meta-synthesis method, which is one of the qualitative methods based on interpretingand synthesizing the findings of the studies, carried out with a qualitative and mixed method investigating multiculturalism inthe field of social studies teaching. In the meta-synthesis method, researches on the same subject are interpreted from acritical point of view by creating themes or main templates. Within the scope of the “inclusion criteria” determined, 11 studiesexamining multiculturalism in social studies teaching were analysed.Findings: The findings showed that in order to describe the current situation, the great majority of the studies examined thedocuments, and the data collection and data analysis methods were similar due to the document analysis method. Studiesexamining multiculturalism in different units of the curriculum of social studies course show that the situations of addressingmulticulturalism in the program have varied over the years, and that there have been significant developments over time interms of the representation of multiculturalism in the context of learning domain. Studies conducted on social studiestextbooks show that the reflection of multiculturalism on books took place later than the curriculum. As a result, it is seen thatthe level of multiculturalism is still not sufficient.Conclusion: Instead of conducting descriptive studies that determine the extent to which multiculturalism is represented insocial studies documents, social studies researchers are suggested to carry out studies using different methods that createproducts for the creation of multicultural education environments that can be carried out with a social studies curriculum.

Highlights

The heterogeneity that exists in any society or any individual is distinguished through different viewpoints and different ways of expressing opinions
Instead of conducting descriptive studies that determine the extent to which multiculturalism is represented in social studies documents, social studies researchers are suggested to carry out studies using different methods that create products for the creation of multicultural education environments that can be carried out with a social studies curriculum
Descriptive Findings The most prominent finding when the studies included in the meta-synthesis are examined is that while some of the studies focus on the "multiculturalism" phenomenon, some of them focus on the phenomenon of "multicultural education" that is a part of multiculturalism

Summary

Introduction

The heterogeneity that exists in any society or any individual is distinguished through different viewpoints and different ways of expressing opinions These different viewpoints generally evolve from discrepancies rooted in ethnic origin, race, religious heritage, gender, social class, age, language, and learning ability (Dilworth, 2000). In education systems with multicultural perspectives valuing individual differences, treating every individual and considering the social and cultural environment in which individuals maintain their lives are essential (Karasu Avcı & Faiz, 2018). While teaching something to different cultural groups, teachers should be careful about how factors like time immigration, social class, region, religion, having a divergent feature, and education; and behaviors and values affect individuals in an ethnic group and subgroups (Banks, 2013). The education model which argues that the educational process is not culturally neutral, but that culture is at the center of teaching and learning processes is the multicultural education (Edwards, 2004)

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