Determining the legal literacy levels of secondary school students in the frame of social studies education

To be legally literate means that the students are aware of their legal duties and responsibilities as citizens, rather than being experts in legal matters. This study, therefore, aims at determining the legal literacy levels of the eight-grade students. The study employs a descriptive survey model and covers 3407 eight grade secondary school students from 12 different regions forming NUTS1(The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) in 2012-2013 school year. The sample was designed on the principle of maximum variation sampling method. Based upon the essays written by the students of basic education and upon the acquisitions from the social studies courses covering legal topics, a ? Basic Education Legal Literacy Questionnaire? consisting of four sections-(1) personal information form, (2) scale for affective tendencies toward law, (3) law behavior scale, and (4) law knowledge test- was developed and used in line with the aims of the study. The quantitative data was analyzed with the help of SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Scientists), and a significance level of 0,005 was used in the analysis. For irrelevant (independent) samples between the components composing legal literacy and independent variants, t-test; for irrelevant samples, ?One-Way Variance Analysis (ANOVA)?; and with the aim of revealing whether there existed a significant relation among legal literacy components, ?Simple Correlation Analysis? were applied. The data was also analyzed with ?Welch Test? when the variances were not homogenous. When the mean value of the total score that the eighth grade students got from legal literacy scale was observed, it was seen that their legal literacy levels were relatively higher than the specified values. It was found out that there existed a positive mid-level significant correlation for the legal literacy dimensions of knowledge, perception, and behavior. Key Words: Law, Legal Literacy, Literacy, Social Studies Teaching