The effect of social gender based activities, which integrated into social studies course, on the attitudes towards social gender profession selection

In this thesis, the effects of gender mainstreaming activities applied in social studies courses on the attitudes of female students towards their profession choices were examined. In the study, in order to reveal the difference between attitudes of the experimental group in which gender activities were applied and the control group in which gender activities were not applied towards gender-based profession choices, " the static- group pretest- posttest design" was used. The study group consisted of 4th-grade students attending a Elementary School in the district of Körfez, Kocaeli, in the spring term of the 2017-2018 academic year. With the decision given randomly, the 4-D class (29 students, 13 boys- 16 girls) were assigned as the experiment group, where the 4-C class (27 students, 14 boys- 13 girls) were assigned as the control group. In the research, "Attitude Scale Towards Gender-Based Profession Choices" developed by Çetin Gündüz and Tarhan (2015) was used as a pretest and posttest. In the data analysis phase, firstly, frequency and percentage analysis were used to describe the demographic characteristics of the students in the experimental and control groups. After that, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to determine whether the data were distributed normally or not before carrying out statistical operations for data analysis. A non-parametric test, namely Mann-Whitney U test was used in order to determine whether there was any difference between the post-test scores of the experimental and control groups regarding the total scores of the Attitude Scale Towards Gender-Based Profession Choices. Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test was used in order to compare the total post-test scores of the experiment and control groups in the Attitude Scale Towards Gender-Based Profession Choices. Independent samples T-test was used in the other measurements. As a result of the research, it was concluded that there was no statistically significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores in the positive attitude dimension of the students in the experimental group. It was concluded that there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores in favor of the experimental group in the negative attitude dimension and the total scale. Accordingly, it was found that the scores of students' negative attitudes towards gender-based profession choices decreased after the experimental procedure. When the results of the control group's intra-group measurements were examined, it was concluded that there was no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test attitude scores of the students based on gender-based profession choices. When the posttest scores of the experimental group and the control group were compared, it was found that the scores on the negative attitudes towards gender-based profession choices and the total scores differed in favor of the experimental group. When all these findings are evaluated together, it can be concluded that gender equality activities applied in social studies course positively affect students' attitudes towards gender based profession choices. Key Words: Social Studies, Sex, Gender, Gender Equality, Primary School Students.