Abstract:

Life Studies textbooks help students to gain experience related to life itself, to discuss the events and issues and develop a personal stance for the life. The new curriculum launched in 2005 has seriously affected the content of the Life Studies courses. The new Life Studies textbooks introduce the potential problems that students possibly face in their everyday life or in their school environments as in the form of case studies. In this sense, the purpose of the present study is to illuminate in what ways and how effective the case study approach as one of the teaching methods used in the Life Studies textbooks can be used in classroom environments. Interview and observation methods were used as the main data collection tools. Sixty five classroom teachers of 1.,2. and 3rd grades were interviewed. In addition, three hours of Life Studies lecture, which is based on case study method, of the 15 classroom teachers were observed. The content analysis was applied to the data obtained through the interviews and observations. Some of the outcomes of the research are; teachers mainly benefitted the case studies appear on the teachers’ guide book, textbook and student’ study book; the teachers, not pupils, mostly draw a conclusion while case studies were evaluated in the classrooms.Although case studies have great potential in the new Life Studies textbooks, the application of the case studies in the classroom environments need to be improved in some respects.

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