Abstract:

The main purpose of this study is to determine the level of critical thinking skills in social studies textbooks. In this way, it is aimed to present suggestions by making inferences for the improvement of the quality of the textbooks. The case study design, one of the qualitative research designs, was used in the research. The data were collected using the document review form prepared by the researcher and the descriptive analysis method was used to analyze the data. The study material of the research consists of the 5th, 6th and 7th-grade social studies textbooks used in the 2021-2022 academic year which were prepared by the Ministry of National Education. Activities within the units and assessment-evaluation sections of the examined textbooks were examined separately. According to the results of the research, the content of the textbooks on critical thinking skills differs both according to the grade level and between the unit activities and assessment-evaluation sections. It has been observed that there are significant proportional differences in terms of the distribution of critical thinking activities according to themes. In addition, imbalances were detected in the distribution of the content for critical thinking sub-skills in the textbooks.

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