The effect of using metacognitive strategy in social studies course on gaining values and attitude towards the course

The aim of the study is to determine the effect of using strategy that develop metacognitive skills in primary school 4th grade Social Studies Course on gaining values and attitude towards the course. Design of the study is nonequivalent groups pre-test and post-test design, a kind of quasi-experimental design. Target population of the study is 4th grade students in Turkey. Accessible population is, however, 4th grade students in Elazığ. Sample of the study is one each school and two each classroom out of five education districts in Elazığ city centre in the fall term of 2015-2016 academic year. In every school, one each classroom is defined as experimental group and the other one each classroom is defined as the control group. The experimental group consisted of 138 students. The control group consisted of 137 students. 275 students in total were included in the study. IMPROVE method based on metacognitive strategies related to helping the values gained in Social Studies course was used with the experimental group. Methods based on current curriculum were used to help the values gained in Social Studies course with the control group. In the study "I Am Getting to Know Myself Unit Achievement Test" developed by the researchers was used. Also, in the study "Tolerance Attitude Scale" developed by Yarar-Kaptan (2015) was used related to tolerance value and "Metacognitive Awareness Inventory Form A For Kids" developed by Sperling, Howard, Miller and Murphy (2002) and adapted to Turkish by Karakelle and Saraç (2007) was used related to the metacognitive awareness levels of students. Lastly, in order to define students attitudes towards Social Studies course, "Primary School Students' Attitudes Towards Social Studies Course Scale" prepared by Ministry of National Education was used in the study. Data of the study were analysed with computer-aided data analysis program for social sciences. Arithmetic mean, standard deviation, for minimum, maximum skewness and kurtosis values descriptive statistics, mixed between within group analysis of covariance, mixed between within group multivariate analysis of covariance and univariate tests were used to analyse the data. It was found out that there was no statistical difference between the posttest average scores of the experimental and control groups, related to I am Getting to Know Myself Unit Achievement Test and experimental implementation related to this variable was turned out to have no effects in practice. As a result of Tolerance Attitude Test analysis in "Respect to Thoughts" sub-scale, it was found out that there was no statistical difference between the posttest average scores of the experimental and control groups, however, experimental implementation related to this variable was turned out to have some effects in practice. As a result of "Being Understanding", "Love" and "Respect to Emotions" sub-scales analysis, there was no statistical difference between the posttest average scores of the experimental and control groups, and experimental implementation related to this variable was turned out to have no effects in practice. As a result of the analysis related to Metacognitive Awareness Scale and its sub-scales "Supervision", "Mission", "Monitoring" and "Personal Awareness, it was found out that there was no statistical difference between the posttest average scores of the experimental and control groups, and experimental implementation related to this variable was turned out to have no effects in practice. Finally, it was determined that there was no statistical difference between the posttest average scores of the experimental and control groups in the "Negative Attitude" and "Contribution to Life" sub-dimensions of the Social Studies Lesson Attitude Scale, and the experimental implementation related to this variable was turned out to have no effects in practice. However, there was a statistically significant difference in favor of the experimental group in the "Positive Attitude" sub-dimension. Accordingly, it was concluded that the use of the IMRPOVE method positively affected the attitude towards the Social Studies course.