The place and value of service learning practices as alearning method in religious culture and ethics courses

Service Learning is a teaching method in which community goals are added to academic goals. It is an effective approach that supports children's academic learning content with authentic learning experiences in real life. In this way it contains the affective and behavioral dimension of learning as well as cognitive dimension. The purpose of this study is to investigate the awareness of the Service Learning method that emphasizes the social and behavioral dimension of the learning by DKAB course teachers and its applicability in religious education. In this study mixed method is preferred. Firstly, education, the aims and social aspects of education, the approaches that emphasize the social direction of education and the service learning practices in Turkey are addressed. In these areas, a conceptual framework was created by searching the literature. Later on, the Service Learning Method was introduced, Service Learning application examples in the USA are examined, the applicability of this approach to religious education was discussed, tried to give examples of practices that can be done with this method in religious education. In addition; a suvey was applied to 64 (sixty four) DKAB course teachers from different schools in Ankara to identify the awareness of the HEÖ method by the teachers, whether it is used in lessons, where it is used and how it is used, the thoughts about whether this method would contribute to the teaching of religion. The data obtained as a result of the survey were analyzed in the IBM-SPSS 22 program.10 of teachers from the survey were also interviewed. It has been observed that a large proportion of DKAB secondary school teachers participating in the study do not use this method in their lessons because they are either not familiar with the HEÖ method or know little about it so they don't use this method in their lessons, they prefer to use more verbal lecture and question-answer methods. In the same way, a large part of the teachers stated that the psychomotor dimension was missing in the DKAB lessons. They pointed out that there is a need for new teaching methods and techniques. It has been seen that they are student-centered, they emphasize the social dimension of education and look for an approach based on the principle of learning by doing-living.