Comparison of 2005-2017 soci̇al studies curriculum: Fact is a scienti̇fic work

The purpose of this research is to examine the 2017 Social Sciences Course Curriculum in terms of revisions, its strengths and weaknesses, the potentials and the differences from the 2015 Social Sciences Course Curriculum. This inquiry is the one that delves into such main issues in the curriculum as general purposes, educational philosophies, learning areas, units, objectives, measurement-assessment, vision, concepts, values, and the Ataturkism subjects, and that makes comparisons the previous curriculum based on the opinions of participants from the field. In this study, the document analysis and the phenomenological research designs from the qualitative research methodologies were used. First, the 2005 and the 2017 Social Sciences Course Curriculums were compared in terms of similarities and differences. Second, the participants views' on the former and the latter were examined through semi-structured interviews. Key Words: Social Sciences, 2005 Social Studies Curriculum, 2017 Social Studies Curriculum, Program Review, Program Items. A total of 20 participants were recruited in this study. Maximum variation sampling technique from the purposeful sampling methods was used to recruit the participants. In this sense, two scholars in the Department of Social Sciences Education in Amasya University, four prospective teachers studying at the Department of Social Sciences Education, and ten teachers, four of whom were mentors, in Amasya Province participated in this study. The interviews were recorded through a tape recorder. The interview data were transcribed, and the qualitative data were analyzed and categorized in line with the content analysis method. For this purpose, the NVIVO 9 Software was employed, and the emerging themes and codes were simplified and presented in tables and models. Following the qualitative analyses, it was concluded that the participants had detailed information about the 2017 Social Sciences Curriculum. Further, it was revealed that the course' objectives and content were reduced in the 2017 Social Sciences Curriculum when compared to the 2005 Social Sciences Curriculum, and there are learning gaps between the curriculums due to tthe reductions in the number of the objectives and concepts. What is more, new values were added to the 2017 Social Sciences Curriculum, whereas some of them were removed the 2005 Social Sciences Curriculum. There is evidence to suggest that explanations related to teaching the concepts and the concept lists weren't included. Finally, it was found that the Ataturkism subjects were reduced. The findings show that the 2017 Social Sciences Curriculum is not as qualified as to reveal the richness of social sciences, and is a summary of the 2005 Social Sciences Curriculum with small differences or reductions, so this curriculum may not yield expected results in terms of the educational objectives.