Preservice History and Social Studies Teachers' Perceptions of Outdoor History Teaching.

Abstract

Creating positive attitude and behaviors in individuals towards the environment he/she lives in, outdoor teaching aims at bringing the individual together with unwritten evidences by making use of historical environment and resources when considered especially within the scope history and social studies teaching. Using relational screening model, this study aimed at investigating preservice history and social studies teachers’ perceptions of outdoor history teaching in terms of different variables. The participants were composed of 265 preservice teachers studying at two different universities in Turkey during 2016-2017 academic year. Outdoor History Teaching Perceptions Scale (OHTPS), which was developed by Yazici and Yildirim (2017) and aimed at determining the teachers’/preservice teachers’ perceptions of outdoor history teaching, was used as the data collection tool. Within the framework of this study, preservice history and social studies teachers’ perceptions of outdoor history teaching were investigated in terms of gender, university, department, GPA, and appointment status after graduation. As a result of the study, it was found that preservice social studies teachers obtained higher scores from the subscales of outdoor history teaching awareness, knowledge, and competency, and from the complete scale than preservice history teachers. Article visualizations: