History curiosity and trajektory of primary school

Curiosity is one of the first conditions of learning. The individual is interested in a subject as much as he wonders and enters the learning effort. One of the important fields in which curiosity seeds flourish is the social studies during education process of individual. In the context of social studies course, the education of history subjects in primary school directly affects students' curiosity about the past and their desire to learn the past they are curious about. For this reason, it is important to have an idea about what historical phenomena students are interested in in primary school in terms of effective social studies education and determining the curriculum and course materials to be prepared in this field. The aim of this study is to determine the individuals, events, places and periods that primary school students are curious about in history and to reveal the types of history curiosity within the framework of why they are curious about these phenomena. In the study, grounded theory was used as one of the qualitative research designs. In the process of grounded theory, the participants of the research were determined based on maximum diversity of purposeful sampling methods in accordance with the qualitative research design in accordance with the purpose and problem of the study. The sample of the study consists of totally 280 students-ten students from all grades in each elementary school in a primary economic level determined in seven provinces (İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Bolu, Mersin, Elazığ, Şırnak) selected on the basis of seven geographical regions throughout the country. The data of the study was collected by xix interview method. The researcher conducted interviews with each student for 5-10 minutes in a suitable environment within the school. During the interviews, the students were asked which person, event, place, period and they were most curious about in history. The data obtained from the interviews were analyzed and the types of historical curiosity of primary school students were determined. Accordingly, the most curious characters of primary school students in history, political characters, military characters, religious characters, scientific characters, family characters, prehistoric characters, artistic-literary-sporting characters, other characters and relatives of political characters are divided into themes. The places that primary school students are most curious about in history are divided to themes such as living places, architectural works, battlefields, province- countries, scientific places and other places. The most curious periods of primary school students in history are divided into themes such as well-known characters period, prehistoric periods, military events period, important events-dates, states period and other periods. It was observed that primary school students were mostly interested in male characters, especially Atatürk according to history curiosity. In addition, students are most curious about political and military people and events. As a result of the analyses, cognitive dimension, affective dimension and psychomotor dimension were taken as basis in primary school students' historical curiosity types. The types of history curiosity determined within the scope of cognitive dimension are curiosity based on historical knowledge and thinking skills, curiosity based on knowledge, curiosity based on knowledge gap, hypothetical curiosity, comparative curiosity, synchronic curiosity, social curiosity, mediatic curiosity, unusual curiosity, questioning curiosity. The types of curiosity that are determined within the scope of affective dimension are sympathetic curiosity, empathic curiosity and aesthetic curiosity which are curiosity related to affective learning. The types of curiosity identified within the psychomotor dimension are realistic experiential curiosity and romantic experiential curiosity, which are curiosity related to experiential learning. Among the primary school students, the most common types of history curiosity are important curiosity and knowledge-oriented curiosity, which are seen depending on historical knowledge. The least seen types of history curiosity are synchronic curiosity, hypothetical curiosity, comparative curiosity and questioning curiosity.