Creative thinking in education of social knowledge: Evaluation of enhancing uses of activities creativity for new elemantary curriculum of fifth class social knowladge education

Constant improvement of education program takes root from the constant changes of all area of life. When we consider the importance of creative thinking in an international competition arena, it is important for students to acquire creative thinking skills at the very beginning years of their school life. From this point of view social studies lesson plays an important role in the practice of creative thinking by means of the activities used in the lessons. This study aims to evaluate the sort of activities, the types of materials and the possible problems that teachers have faced of during the application of creative thinking in their lessons while applying mentioned programme throughout the academic year of 2005.The study involves surveys, poll, interviews and observations. For this reason quantative and quality techniques are used together. The study group was made up with two hundred of fifth class teachers from the sixty two schools which are determined by the way of proportional group sampling. The research group consists of all the teachers teaching the fifth grade students in the central region of Mersin. Each school in the universe (147 elementary education school) is evaluated separately in one group.Twenty teachers were interviewed to get more detailed information due to the results of poll. And also the observation techniques were applied on ten teachers. Typical condition sampling was used for data collection. The data of poll is collected by using ?In Social Studies to Improve of Creative Thinking Activities? that the researcher has modified. The teachers who are interviewed were determined according to the characteristics of poll data. The meeting questions were set up parallel to poll questions. In order to identify the attitude, more detailed and comprehensive observations were done. In the data analysis of statistic techniques, (frequency, percent, arithmetic mean, standard deviation), chi-square test and content analysis were used. Consequently; the result of the study showed that the fifth grade teachers applied the activities in the programme of 2005. Among all the activities, the most widely used ones were; research task, if you were activity, brain storming and argument activities. As a result of chi-square analyse, there is no meaningful relation between the level of teachers? practicing the activities, the type of the school from which the teachers are graduated, their gender, profession, reading habits, students? social?economic status, or the number of the students in the class.According to the survey results, it is appeared that 2005 programme is directing students to investigate and use their imagination. % 93 of teachers think that the activities address to different characters of students. On the other hand, % 6.5 of the teachers complained that the length of the units and the shortness of time made the activities less appealing for a certain group of students. It was also found out that teachers mostly used the course book and the activity books in their lessons. With the 2005 program, it is came forward that the activities used in the social studies lessons, are useful for the students to attend the lessons actively. The activities, which were used to reinforce student?s creative thinking, helped a lot to fifth grade students to have a creative mind. When we look at the diagnoses of the survey about the preparation, application, and evaluation of the creative thinking techniques, it is clear to claim that teachers? attitude has contributed a lot to the students? creative thinking. According to the teachers, crowded classes and shortness of time are the main problems. They have all agreed on the benefits of the creative activities done in the social studies lessons and they also stated that teachers should attend the seminars on creative thinking and follow the innovations about it as well.