Cite: Demirtaş, Ç. (2022). Teachers’ views on political subjects in the social studies curriculum. Pedagogical Perspective, 1(2), 115-128.
DOI: 10.29329/pedper.2022.493.4
*Correspondency: cagridemirtass@gmail.com © 2022, Pedagogical Perspective
Pedagogical Perspective, 2022, Vol 1, No 2, 114-128
ISSN: 2822-4841
Available online at http://www.pedagogicalperspective.com
Teachers’ views on political subjects in the social studies
curriculum
1
Çağrı DEMİRTAŞ
2*
2
Social Studies Education, Adıyaman University, Adıyaman, Türkiye.
Article Info Abstract
Keywords
Politics
Social Studies
Citizenship
Article History
Received 11.10.2022
Received in revised form
05.11.2022
Accepted 06.11.2022
Article Type
Research Article
10.29329/pedper.2022.493.4
The education system, which the ruling power uses to ensure that its ideology
is adopted while creating the goals of the education system, is intertwined
with politics due to its nature. In this respect, it is impossible to consider
education separately from politics. Social studies education comes to the
fore as the field where ideology is given to individuals intensively. Hence, it
is important to examine the social studies Curriculum and reveal the current
condition of the Curriculum for acquiring political skills. The opinions of
teachers, who are the Curriculum’s implementers, about the Curricul um, its
implementation, or the elimination of the Curriculum’s deficiencies, if any,
and supporting the Curriculum with new ideas are important. The current
study was regarded as important to determine the views of the Curriculum
implementers concerning the current condition of the social studies
Curriculum and its improvement if needed. The basic interpretative
qualitative research approach was employed to determine the views of social
studies teachers on political subjects in the social studies Curriculum. The
study group of the present research consists of 20 social studies teachers
working in public schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education
in the central district of Adıyaman province. A standardized open-ended
interview form was used to collect data from teachers in the study. The data
acquired at the end of the data collection process were analyzed by adopting
the inductive analysis approach. To this end, the data obtained were
analyzed in accordance with the inductive analysis approach and concept
coding method, categories were created, and themes were reached from the
categories. According to the findings, the majority of the social studies
teachers participating in the study stated that the subjects of political literacy
were not suitable for the level of students. While justifying this, they indicated
that politics was not suitable for the age level of students, society was not
ready for this, or concepts in the politics-related Curriculum were abstract. It
should be specified that teacher statements are actually the result of a social
reflection. It can be said that the reason why politics is generally viewed
negatively is the political-based events that took place in Turkey in the past.
1 Introduction
In the broadest sense, politics is the activity that people carry out to make, protect, and change
the general rules that govern their lives. Politics is connected in a complex way with the
phenomena of conflict and cooperation. On the one hand, the presence of competing ideas,
divergent desires, competing needs, and conflicting interests leads to the fact that people do not
1
This study was presented as a presentation of the 8
th
International Symposium on Social Studies Education.