Teacher and student opinions on the use of literary product in religious culture and moral knowledge

There is a deep-rooted relationship between the fields of religion and literature which is based on the past .While literature owes its development and sometimes its formation in terms of literary products to religions, religions have also benefited from the expressive power of literature and its acceptability among the people. Nowadays, although this interaction is not intense, it still continues. Especially oral and written literary products are used as a course material both in religion and moral teaching and in other teaching fields.Literary products, where the language is used effectively and beautifully, the cultural values of the society can be easily reflected, and which can contribute to the development of people by appealing to their emotions, are one of the resources that should be applied in the courses aiming at transferring culture such as Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge. When the relevant literature was reviewed, some deficiencies and limitations were determined in the studies on the use of literary products in the RCMK course. The aim of the research is to elicit the usage status of literary products in the contex of the opinions of teachers and students in the RCMK course. The study was carried out by case study which is one of the qualitative research methods. The participants of the study consists of 50 teachers working in Secondary Schools and İmam Hatip Secondary Schools from four education regions in Diyarbakır in the 2020-2021 academic year, and 88 students studying in related schools.The data was obtained through semi-structured interview forms prepared for the study and was analyzed by using the content analysis technique. As a result of the research; It was revealed that the participants agreed on the view that the use of literary products in the RCMK course is beneficial, they thought that literary products should be included more in the course books, the story as a literary genre was mostly used in the RCMK course, a simple and understandable literary language should be used in literary products, and the literary products contributed to the cognitive development of the students.