Attitudes of primary school students regarding the values in social studies and human rights, citizenship and democracy courses

ABSTRACT This research is essentially a values education study in the field of Social Studies. In the study, primary school students' attitudes towards the common values of Social Studies and Human Rights, Citizenship and Democracy courses were examined. There are 18 values in the Social Studies Curriculum and 14 values in the Human Rights, Citizenship and Democracy Curriculum, and 8 of the 32 values intersect. Undoubtedly, this intersection makes these values much more important in terms of the general objectives of the Turkish education system. Common values of both courses; justice, equality, sensitivity, freedom, responsibility, respect, love and family unity. In this context, the aim of the study is to contribute to the functioning of both Social Studies and Human Rights, Citizenship and Democracy courses by identifying and analyzing students' attitudes towards these 8 critical values. In this context, these values were examined in detail in terms of many variables. Explanatory sequential design, which is a mixed method design, was used in the research. In this design, the research starts with the quantitative method and continues with the qualitative method. In this context, the study group of the research was determined separately for quantitative and qualitative processes. The quantitative universe of the research consisted of students studying in primary schools in Malatya city center in the first semester of the 2019-2020 academic year. The sample of the study was determined by simple random sampling technique. During the scale development phase, 342 students were reached for exploratory factor analysis, 325 students for confirmatory factor analysis, and 1249 students to collect the final data of the research. Maximum diversity, which is one of the purposive sampling techniques, was used in compiling the qualitative data of the study. In this context, a total of 24 students were studied. The data collection process in the study was carried out in two stages. In the first stage, Social Studies and Human Rights, Citizenship and Democracy lesson Common Values Attitude Scale developed by the researcher was used. With the aforementioned scale, the quantitative data of the research were obtained. In the second stage, the qualitative data of the research were collected with the semi-structured interview form developed by the researcher. Descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used in the analysis of quantitative data, and content analysis method was used in the analysis of qualitative data. According to the results of the research, the level of acquiring values is higher for female students than male students; no significant difference was observed between the grade levels except for the sub-dimension of freedom; there is an increase due to the increase in academic achievement, reading books, and the education level of the parents; there is a significant difference according to the occupational status of the mother and father; According to the number of siblings variable, students with fewer siblings are relatively higher; It has been observed that students who study in better schools in terms of the socioeconomic level of the schools have higher attitudes. The level of primary school students' attitudes towards Social Studies and Human Rights, Citizenship and Democracy course values is generally high. Keywords: Values Education, Social Studies, Citizenship Education, Attitude.