Skills Teaching in the Social Studies Course in the Light of Graduate Theses

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the trends of postgraduate theses on skills teaching in Social Studies education between 2010-2020, identifying the problems encountered by researchers in the process of skills teaching, and presenting the solutions provided to these problems. With this purpose, 74 master's and doctoral theses on skills teaching in the Social Studies course were included in the research. Descriptive content analysis was used in data analysis. The results demonstrated that there are mainly attempts towards practical implementations in skills teaching, and the teaching processes are attached importance in the Social Studies course. The investigation of the theses revealed that many studies were conducted on skills development, but the number of theses on social skills was limited. It was determined that there was insufficient explanation regarding the teaching-learning processes in some of these theses. However, the experiences of the researchers concerning the processes were not included in many of the theses. It was also observed that in some of the theses, there was no information about the assessment tools utilized, and some researchers were not critical of the results of the analyses. In addition, there was no scientific justification for the time allocated to the implementations in most of these theses. Researchers stated that they encountered problems due to insufficient implementation time in the process of skills development. The suggestions made by the researchers at the end of the process include updating the curricula and course books, eliminating the infrastructure deficiencies at schools, and providing in-service training to teachers.