Political education in social studies classrooms: a perspective from Turkey

Abstract

Today, the citizenship education has become a very important study field in the entire world. Political education, on the other hand, has another important dimension in the citizenship education. Thus, there is a rapid increase in the number of studies concerning the citizenship education and the political education. Educational system in different countries involves lesson or lessons aimed at bringing political knowledge in students. In Turkey, on the other hand, an important part of knowledge and skills that are required for students to become good citizens is brought via the Social Studies lesson. This study aims to determine the applications in social studies classes where citizenship and political education is basically taught via observations and to determine the views of social studies teachers on this subject. In this study using the mixed method, we received the opinions of 75 social studies teachers regarding the education of political subjects and observed the intraclass applications of 12 social studies teachers for 10 weeks. According to the results of the study, there are differences between the views of students and intraclass applications. While teachers emphasize the necessity of teaching political subjects in social studies classes and giving information about the political process, the observation results show that a number of social studies teachers do not involve political subjects and information about the political process.