Abstract:

Social studies course preserves its importance from past to present in raising both national and international citizens. Considering the importance of the social studies course, it was necessary to shed light on the difficulties encountered in this course. The aim of this study is to examine the reasons why students have difficulty in social studies course in detail. When the literature is scrutinized, it is seen that the problems encountered in the social studies course are not addressed as a whole. It is important to examine the causes of the problems encountered in this study as a whole by considering many sub-dimensions. Phenomelogy study, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study. The study group of the research consists of 7 primary teachers. The semi-structured "Interview Form" prepared by the researcher based on expert opinion was used as the data collection tool in the study. The data were obtained by descriptive analysis, one of the qualitative data analysis techniques. When the research analyzes are examined, the most difficult issues in the social studies course are the National Struggle Period, Active Citizenship and abstract issues, students' difficulties in social studies course are related to the inability to read, academic achievement and the abstractness of the subjects, the curriculum is not suitable for the student level, it was concluded that their motivation was high in the social studies less on and that mostly contemporary methods and techniques were used in the social studies lesson. When the opinions of the classroom teachers about the textbooks were examined, it was concluded that the textbooks had deficiencies in terms of content, language and design, but this situation did not correlate with the difficulty of the students in social studies lesson. Primary teachers' suggestions for the 4th Grade social studies course are to narrow the scope of the subject and improve the content.

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