Journal of Individual Differences in Education, 2020, 2(1), 1-22 The Analysis of the Pedagogic Content Knowledge Regarding the Culture and Heritage Learning Area of Social Studies Teachers and Teacher Candidates * Tolga Tosun 1 , Hüseyin Çalışkan 2 1 Sakarya University, Institute of Educational Sciences, Sakarya, Turkey 2 Sakarya University, Faculty of Education, Hendek, Sakarya, Turkey ABSTRACT ARTICLE INFO Pedagogic content knowledge and transfer peculiar to social studies is the most crucial matter which is necessary to teach this subject. This study aims to analyze the pedagogic content knowledge of social studies teachers and teacher candidates, regarding sixth grade the learning area of “Culture and Heritage”. In line with this purpose, the study group consists of four social studies teachers who work in Sakarya in 2017-2018 educational year and four social studies teacher candidates who are continuing their fourth year teaching practice lesson. It strives to detect the points such as, how teachers and teacher candidates plan and teach the lesson in the area of culture and heritage learning, which materials they use in the process, how do they do the assessment and evaluation and what types of difficulties they face while teaching the topics. The research was planned as a qualitative study and carried out in phenomenology design due to the fact that the situation was tried to be revealed through interviews. For this purpose, data was gathered by means of semi-structured interviews with teachers and teacher candidates. Descriptive analysis approach was used in data analysis. The acquired data was evaluated with discussing the content knowledge of teachers and teacher candidates in the area of sixth grade social studies lesson culture and heritage learning. As a result of the study, it was found that, teachers and teacher candidates attach importance to the area of culture and heritage learning, make a plan before the lesson, and use various techniques and methods in the teaching process. In addition, it was concluded that the teachers and prospective teachers who participated in the interview conducted research from different sources in order to provide a variety of documents but faced some difficulties in teaching certain topics. Article History: Received: 05.11.2019 Received in revised form: 07.02.2020 Accepted: 07.02.2020 Available online: 01.06.2020 Article Type: Standard Paper Keywords: Social studies, culture and heritage, pedagogic content knowledge, teacher, teacher candidate © 2020 JIETP All rights reserved † Extended Summary 1. Introduction One of the seven learning areas in 2018 social studies programs is the “culture and heritage” learning area. Students, through this learning area, acknowledge and get accustomed to the basic elements which constitute the Turkish culture and accept the fact that the culture which creates the national * This study is created from the master’s study titled as ‘‘The Analysis of the Pedagogic Content Knowledge Regarding the Culture and Heritage Learning Area of social Studies Teachers and Teachers Candidates’’. Moreover, it was presented as oral presentation at ERPA 2018 which was held on June 28th – July 1st at Istanbul Universty. † Corresponding author’s address: Sakarya University, Institute of Educational Sciences, Sakarya, Turkey e-mail: tolgatosun@sakarya.edu.tr