Primary School Teachers' Opinions of Social Justice in Life Studies Lessons And In-Class Practices

Abstract

Education is of great importance for the inclusion of persons in society. While education is so important, unfortunately, not all students can benefit from education opportunities offered equally. Problems experienced in reaching quality education that put students at a disadvantage situation can be listed as social differences, gender, language, ethnicity, family structure, socioeconomic status, and having special needs. This study aims to examine teachers' opinion to some students' situation about their disadvantageous in the classroom and how the primary school teachers minimize this disadvantage and furthermore what they do to about social justice in the classroom environment. For this aims, five schools with disadvantaged students were selected to determine the participants of the study, and 10 teachers who voluntarily agreed to participate in the study were selected from the teachers in these school. In this study, case study design, one of the qualitative research methods, was preferred and interview method was used for data collection via semi-structured form. According to the results of the study, it was determined that the teachers' work for disadvantaged students focused on " peer collaboration", "forming heterogeneous groups" and "respecting different cultures". It was stated that when they made these practices, the problems of the students decreased and they improved academically and socially.