Assessment of the 8th grade law and justice course curriculum according to expert opinions

Raising children's awareness of law and justice at an early age is important for creating a democratic lifestyle that respects human rights in society. Children are to determine the future of society. Therefore, it is to great importance for children to be informed about human rights and to develop an awareness of law and justice. In this context, the Law and Justice course has been taught as an elective course in 8th grade since the 2018-2019 school year. This study examined the law and justice course curriculum in accordance with expert opinion. In the study in which the qualitative research method was used, the data of 10 teachers working in elementary schools of the Ministry of National Education in Ankara and 10 faculty members working in the field of social science education in public universities were collected using a six-question semi-structured interview form prepared by the researcher. Content analysis of the data was performed using the MAXQDA-2020 program for qualitative data analysis. The research has shown that the Law and Justice Course curriculum is suitable for the purpose of the course, and there is no problem in terms of course gains, content, learning-teaching process and measurement-evaluation process. In addition, this research has also shown that basic subjects such as children's rights are missing from the curriculum and some subjects are difficult to learn by students due to their excessive detail. In line with these results, it is recommended to add the missing topics of the Law and Justice course curriculum to the curriculum by taking expert opinions and to simplify the overly detailed topics.