Özet:

This study was carried out to investigate social studies teachers‟ views of the Social Studies Curriculum, their epistemological beliefs, and the correlation between the former two. Participants in this descriptive study were 332 teachers currently working in the elementary schools located in central Denizli, Turkey. Data were gathered by Opinion Scale for the Social Studies Curriculum and Epistemological Beliefs Scale. The gathered data were analyzed by the descriptive techniques of frequencies, means, and standard deviations. Additionally Kendall and Spearman techniques were used to investigate correlations. Findings in this study demonstrated that the views regarding the all four dimensions of the curriculum were moderately positive and that the teachers‟ epistemological beliefs were particularly more superficial in the two dimensions other than “learning depends on effort”. Findings additionally revealed that the views toward the curriculum move towards the positive side as the epistemological beliefs get sophisticated. This correlation might be interpreted as a positive credit for the mentioned curriculum while it also discloses that teachers with sophisticated epistemological beliefs are keys for the curriculum reform movements.

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