The effect of literature based social studies instruction on akademic achievement and retention of seventh grade students

ABSTRACTTHE EFFECT OF LITERATURE BASED SOCIAL STUDIES INSTRUCTİON ONAKADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AND RETENTION OF SEVENTH GRADESTUDENTSMehmet TEKGÖZMA. Thesis, The Department of Educational SciencesAdvisor: Asst. Prof. Dr. Ahmet DOĞANAYMay-2005, 165 pagesThis stuy is designed to determine the effect of literature based social studiesinstruction on academic achıevement and retention of seventh grade students.The research, which is a pretest-posttest control-group test model, was given to 64students from 7th 1 Nisan Pension Grade School at the district of Karaisalı, province of Adanain 2003-2004 education year. The units of ?Türkiye?nin Coğrafi Bölgeleri (GeographicalAreas of Turkey)?, ?İstanbul?un Fethi ve Sonrası (Conquest of İstanbul and Later)?,?Avrupa?da Yenilikler (Reforms in Europe)?, which were selected for the study, were taughtby using conventional teaching materials on 32 students control group and literarature basedinstruction method was used together with conventional teaching materials to teach the unitsto the 32 experiment-group-student. Both groups were given a pretest before teaching theunits: ?Türkiye?nin Coğrafi Bölgeleri (Geographical Areas of Turkey)?, ?İstanbul?un Fethi veSonrası (Conquest of İstanbul and Later)?, ?Avrupa?da Yenilikler (Reforms in Europe)? anda posttest after teaching the units mentioned and a permanent test approximately after fourweeks. Student Interview is also applied to experiment group. The data were analysed usingSPSS program. ?t? test, ancova analysis, frequency, percent calculations are done.According to the results obtained from analyses the following conclusions were found:1. Literarature based instruction method proved to be more effective in term ofacademic success.2. Literarature based instruction method proved to be more effective in terms ofretention of learning.3. Student Interview analyses showed that the students who were instructed withliterature based instruction method as teaching metarial had more interest in the lesson,improved their reading habit and participated in the lessons, made more connectionsbetween themes, remembered the learnt subject more easily and pictured the new subjects inmind more easily.Key Words: Literature based social studies instruction, academic success test,retention test.