Teacher's views on teaching and explaining geographical discoveries in social studies textbooks from 1968 to present

This study is a qualitative+qualitative two satage partially mixed study in the first stage of the research, it was aimed to determine how the subject of geographical discoveries took place in the social studies textbooks prepared according to the 1968, 1971-1972, 1985, 1998, 2005 and 2017-2018 programs. In the research, social studies 7the grade textbooks of 1968, 1973, 1983, 1987, 1989, 1999, 2002, 2013, 2015, 2018 ve 2020 were used. The most common visuals about geographical discoveries in textbooks are photographs of persons. The most mentioned Explorer is christopher columbus and the most related concepts are exploration and continental concepts. The subjectnis given in the textbooks by associating it with the renaissance subject. It cocluded that the measurement tools in the texbooks mostly consisted of low lewel questions, and in recent years, high lewel questions were encountered. In the second stage of the studyi the views of teachers on teaching were discussed. In the 2019-2020 academic year, a semi-structured interview form was appliedto 20 teachers working in the 7th grade social studies course in Kırşehir and analyzed according to the content analysis. It has been concluded that the teachers find it important to teach the subject of geographical discoveries, they mostly use plain lectures and quesition answers in classroom prectices, they have problems in explaining the subject due to the student, and they find the course hours given to the subject insufficient. Keywords: Geographical Discoveries, Social Studies Currıculum, Social Studies Textbooks, Teacher Opinion