In social studies education historical analysis of differentiated instruction practices and evaluation of the implementation process today according to the teacher views

The main purpose of this research is to reveal the place of differentiated instruction practices in the course of our educational history, as well as the teaching approaches used in the social studies course, and to evaluate the usability of differentiated instruction as an approach in teaching social studies. The research examined differentiated instruction both in its historical dimension and in its current implementation. Although teaching approaches in history are expressed in different ways than today, they can have original qualities. Based on this, historical documents and texts were examined in the research in order to understand the content of differentiated instruction practices in history and to make inferences about today. Nowadays, social studies education is generally carried out with the mass teaching method. However, carrying out the process by taking individual differences into account is expected to produce more efficient results. On the other hand, in the research, teachers' opinions were sought to contribute to the quality of today's differentiated instruction practices. In this regard, the research was carried out in theoretical and field study dimensions. In the theoretical framework, firstly, the classical period Ottoman madrasah education model, which is similar to the methodology of the differentiated instruction approach, was examined, and then the regulations in the Ottoman modernization period and the Republican period were discussed. In the field study dimension of the research, semi-structured interviews were conducted with social studies teachers. In the study, holistic multiple case design, which is a case study design from the qualitative research tradition, was used. The study group of the research was formed by maximum diversity sampling, which is a type of purposeful sampling method from the qualitative research tradition. In this regard, the field study of the research was conducted by social studies course teachers in secondary schools located in different regions such as the rural areas and the city center of the central districts of Konya (Karatay, Meram, Selçuklu). In this context, 50 social studies teachers were interviewed. The data of the research were primarily handled by document review. Because the use of differentiated instruction as an approach in education systems dates back to ancient times. The evaluation of the current application dimension of differentiated instruction was carried out with the data obtained from semi-structured interviews. First, Maxqda 2022 Creative Data Analysis package program, one of the qualitative data analysis programs, was used to analyze the research data. In this context, the data obtained from the documents examined on the subject were first transformed into themes, then into categories related to the themes, and finally into codes related to the categories, in order to create semantic integrity between them. Subsequently, after the codes created were subjected to descriptive analysis and content analysis, findings were tried to be obtained in the context of their meanings. According to the findings obtained from the document review of the research; It has been determined that the roots of the differentiated instruction approach date back to ancient times, that the classical period Ottoman madrasah education model has similar qualities to the differentiated instruction methodology, and that the curriculum programs prepared during the Ottoman modernization period and the Republic period include features related to the differentiated instruction approach. With the findings obtained from the field study of the research, it was determined that social studies teachers had a high level of awareness and positive attitudes towards differentiated instruction, but they encountered some obstacles in the context of curriculum, time and physical conditions in implementing differentiated instruction. Keywords: Differentiated instruction, curriculum, social studies, madrasa.