Abstract:

Museum education is the acquisition of the desired knowledge, skills and values in museum-related environments. Service learning is a learning approach in which academic achievements determined within the scope of any course are gained through community service experiences in the relevant subject. In this context, SL-based museum education is acquiring the desired knowledge, skills, and values by serving society in museum-related environments. In this research, the reflections of museum education based on service learning on social studies pre-service teachers, in the context of “Atatürk in local history”, were examined. In the context of this purpose, the case study method, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the research. The research was conducted on five pre-service teachers studying in the second year of social studies education at a state university. Participants were selected according to criterion sampling, one of the purposive sampling methods. The data were collected through semi-structured interview and analyzed by descriptive analysis method. Validity and reliability were ensured in the study, the role of the researcher was stated, and ethical considerations were taken into consideration. The results of the research based on the opinions of the participants are as follows: After the service learning-based museum education process, the social studies pre-service teachers increased their knowledge about Atatürk in local history, positive developments occurred in their feelings about Atatürk, and many skills improved, their professional motivations increased and they gained professional competence, they experienced a different lesson experience; they created and experienced a change, they realized that the budget is not important in such activities, and the awareness that social studies is fun. However, they also experienced problems related to time, budget, bureaucracy, the initiation of the process, the target audience, the partner institution, the team member, the unexpected situation, and the intensity of the process. It was seen that they solved most of these problems, but some problems could not be solved. The results were discussed within the scope of the relevant literature and various suggestions were made to practitioners and researchers depending on the results.

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