The effect of teaching activities prepared in accordance with current events in social studies lesson on student's decision making skills

The purpose of this research is to determine the effect of teaching activities prepared in accordance with current events in elemantary 4th grade social studies lesson on student?s decision making skills . Teaching activities prepared according to the current events were applied to the experimental group and teaching acivities provided by the program were implemented in the control group. The research was held in Kazan Middle School in the second term of 2012-2013 academic year in 4/A which is the control group and 4/B which is the experimental group. The data gathering instruments of the research were Decision Making Form and Decision Making Skill Rubric. Decision Making Form was designed by the researcher based on Swartz and Parks (1996)?s and Garcia and Michaelis (2001)?s decision making process to balance the experimental and control group and to determine decision making skills of the students before and after the practice. Decision Making Skill Rubric was used to calculate the points of Decision Making Form. These instruments were designed based on the experts judgements. Decision Making Form was performed twice, once in the begining and once at the end of the experimental application in accordance with the experimental pattern model with pretest ? final test control group. The acquired data were analysed in SPSS16.00 Packet Program. The findings depict that the application of teaching activities prepared in accordance with current events make a significant difference compared to the teaching based on the the teacher?s guidance book activities which was provided by the Turkish Ministry of National Education. The teaching activities prepared in accordance with current events were increased the points of students? decision making skills. This research demonstrated that teaching activities prepared in accordance with current events in social studies lesson improved the students? decision making skills. Some significant suggestions are represented in consideration of these findings. Key words: Social Studies Education, Decision Making Skills, Current Events.