Demokrasinin Göstergesi Olarak Tartışmacı Tutum: Eğitim Bağlamında Bir Fikirsel Meydan Okuma Yolu

Abstract

Discussion is both a democratic civic skill and a teaching method. It has been observed thatsocial studies stakeholders are generally kept their distance toward discussion. It has been observedthat there are few studies carried out on the discussion attitudes of teacher candidates (TCs) in thecontext of social studies. It is observed that TCs have both positive and negative attitudes towarddiscussion. On the other hand, the number of studies examining secondary school students' attitudestoward the discussion is limited. The current study aims to examine the attitudes of three participantgroups (student, teacher, and TCs) toward the discussion. The survey model, which is one of thequantitative research methods, was used. The sample of the study consisted of 269 students, 617 TCs,and 167 teachers, a total of 1053 participants, determined by the convenience sampling method. Inorder to collect data, the argumentative attitude scale developed by Infante and Rancer (1982) as 20items and adapted into Turkish as ten items by Turunç, Eser, and Dinç (2018), and a personalinformation form developed by the researchers was used. Frequency and percentage distributionsregarding the demographic characteristics of students, TCs, and teachers, as well as the argumentativeattitudes of the participants, were determined according to the independent variables. According to thefindings, teachers' discussion attitudes did not differ significantly by experience and gender. Asignificant difference was found between the grade levels of TCs and secondary school students. Also,it was observed that male TCs had a higher avoidance attitude. The research showed that althoughteachers, students, and TCs had positive attitudes, they also had various concerns about the discussion.In light of the results, the participation of teachers, students, and TCs in carefully prepared andconducted discussions and the examination of conflicting emotions with longitudinal studies wassuggested.