Investigation of preservice elementary social studies teachers? geography literacy levels

This study explores preservice elementary social studies teachers? Geographic Literacy levels and its relationship with the various variables. For this purpose, to determine the existent situation oriented to a problem statement in its own conditions without having the researcher intervention, descriptive survey method was utilised.The research was carried out in two phases. The first phase was the pilot study and it was conducted with 252 3rd and 4th year preservice social studies teachers studying in two different universities during the Spring semester of 2008-2009 academic year. The main study was also conducted in the same semester with 624 3rd and 4th year preservice social studies teachers studying in three different universities.For the data collection, ?Preservice Social Studies Teachers? Geography Field Standards?, ?Standard Based Geography Literacy Scale? and ?Prospective Social Studies Teachers? Geography Self-Efficacy? scales were used. The first two scales were developed by the researcher and the last one by Karadeniz (2005).To analyze the obtained data central tendency measurement, independent-samples t-test, one and two way ANOVA, pearson correlation and hierarchic multiple regression statistical techniques were utilised.As a result of the study, it has emerged that preservice teachers? geography literacy levels were not sufficient. The data also reveal that preservice teachers' geograpghy literacy levels shows significant difference in terms of gender, attitute, years of studying, the type of the residential areas lived in primary education, the frequency of making some activities related to geography and self-efficacy beliefs. On the other hand, the data demonstrates that preservice teachers? academic avarage, the frequency of using several media resoruces and the type of the residential areas lived in secondary education did not have any significant effect on geography literacy level. In the light of these findings obtained from the research, recommendations were presented for the improvement of the geography literacy and for the possible scientific researches which could be done in the future.