Use of the Public Service Ads in Human Rights, Citizenship and Democracy Courses: A Mixed Method Study

Abstract

The aim of the study is to identify the effects of using the public service ads as a teaching and learning material in the course of human rights, citizenship and democracy on the empathy skills of the primary school students and to reval the views of the primary students about the course of human rights, citizenship and democracy in which the public service ads are employed as a teaching and learning material. The participants of the study are 45 primary school students (25 female and 20 male) who were attending the fourth grade of a public school in Afyon during the fall semester of the school year of 2017-2018. The empathic tendency scale developed by Kaya and Siyez (2010), namely “KA-SI empathic tendency scale child form”, was administered to the participants as both pre-test and post-test. The study lasted for three weeks and a total of twelve public service ads were used in the course of human rights, citizenship and democracy. In addition, the qualitative data of the study were collected through the student diaries kept by the students following the courses. The findings show that the courses of human rights, citizenship and democracy in which the public service ads were employed lead to a significant difference in the emphatic tendency of the participants.  The qualitative findings also supports these findings. In the diaries the participants reported that they used empathy  towards the people and events which they saw in the public service ads.