Abstract:

Newspaper reports are important resources for the Life Science and Social Studies courses as they support students to develop a democratic conception, critical thinking, problem solving and decision making skills. Newspaper is a versatile learning tool that allows students to see the real world. With the use of the newspaper in the Social Studies course, the student may encounter a problem with the environment in which he/she lives. In order to deal with this problem, he/she learns asking questions, making observations and doing research in order to explain and discuss the thoughts on the events. The origin of this research is how much and how newspaper reports are being used by teachers in the teaching environment, which is so important for the Life Science and Social Studies courses. The aim of this study is to evaluate opinions of the primary school teachers about using newspaper reports in the teaching environment of the Life Science and Social Studies courses. Case study pattern is used in this qualitative research. The study group is selected by a convenience sampling method and consists of 35 primary school teachers working in public schools in Istanbul. In this respect, a questionnaire consisting of a series of open-ended questions was applied to 35 primary schoolteachers. The answers given to the open-ended questionnaire and the data collected through the interview notes were collected under the specific categories formed by the content analysis method. As a result of the study, the majority of the teachers in the study group stated that they "relyly" used newspaper reports in the teaching environment of the Life Science and Social Studies courses. In addition, teachers stated that using newspaper reports in the learning environments of the Life Science and Social Studies courses would have the following benefits: providing more concrete learning to students, helping students learn a topic by connecting with real life, developing the ability of students to look at events from different perspectives, providing students to be aware of current events and to develop students' critical thinking, decision making, problem solving and empathy skills. In this way, they expressed that a classroom climate can also be created in which students can actively take part in a democratic discussion environment. Teachers in the study group stated that some newspaper reports may be violent and thus affect the psychology of children negatively, therefore, there may be some disadvantages of using newspaper reports in the teaching environment of the Life Science and Social Studies courses.

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