Content analysis of national and international research on critical thinking in social studies education (2005-2021)

The aim of this study is as thematically examine national master's and doctoral theses and article studies published in national and international databases between 2005 and 2021 on critical thinking in social studies education. Content analysis method, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the research. In order to reach the studies, the key concepts of "critical thinking", "critical thinking in social studies education" and "social studies education" were scanned in the databases of YÖKTEZ, Dergipark, EBSCO, ERIC, Google Academic and ScienceDirect. 73 national and international studies obtained constitute the universe of the research. In the research, the publication classification form developed by (Çiltaş, Güler, & Sözbilir, 2012) was used by adapting it to socials studies education. All studies were examined in terms of type, year of publication, bibliograpy, subject, research method used, research model, data collection tool, sample and sample size, data analysis method and data analysis method types. Thanks to these criteria, all of the studies were coded and the percentages obtained from the data obtained from these codings were presented in tables and graphics. Considering the findings obtained as a result of the research, it was observed that the researchers mostly preferred quantitative research methods in the studies published in the national area, and it was concluded that the use of qualitative research methods was dominant in the studies published in the international area. Again, while quantitative data analysis methods are used in the majority of studies examined in national studies, it is noteworthy that qualitative data analysis methods are preferred in international studies. In the studies examined, it was determined that the most frequently studies research topic was attitude-interest-perception determination. It was concluded that primary school students were used as samples in most of the studies examined. At the end of the research, suggestions were made for studies that will focus on critical thinking in social studies education in the national and international arena.