Investigation of acquisition process of the values covered in the primary school third grade social sciences curriculum according to teachers' and parents' views

This research aimed to investigate acquisition process of the values covered in the primary school third grade social sciences curriculum according to teachers' and parents' views, is a study done with descriptive survey model. Population of the research is formed of the classroom teachers who officiated in Batman city center, in the 2011-2012 education term and taught the third grades, and the parents whose children studied in the classrooms of these teachers. By the way of objective clusters sample technique from the schools in the research population, 48 schools has been determined in total, 169 volunteer teachers who has been taught third grades and 16 parents whose children has been studied in these classrooms has formed the sample of the study. The data of the study collected through "Questionnaire of Opinions toward Acquisition Process of the Values Covered in the Social Sciences Curriculum" which was developed in this study, semi-structured interview forms and personal information forms. Data were analyzed using the statistical software package SPSS 11.5 and, besides investigating the descriptive statistics, paired groups t-test was used. In the analysis of qualitative data content analysis was used. According to the findings of the search, nevertheless teacher satisfying with the partaking level of the values in the social sciences course, they think that these values should take more places in the curriculum. In the acquisitions, content and activities dimensions of the curriculum, while the first three values which has the highest average are patriotism, helpfulness and respect, the three values has the lowest average are peace, patience and justice. In the analysis related to the gaining level of values, it's found that teachers and parents aren't satisfied enough with the acquisition level of the values. According to the teachers' views, while protecting and developing cultural values, toleration, patience, peace, self-respect, self-esteem are gained under the average level; the values of openness to innovation, justice, righteousness-honesty, helpfulness, and love are gained over the average level. According to parents' views, self-esteem, self-respect, sociality, toleration, love-respect, helpfulness, patriority, protecting and developing cultural values, justice, peace, and righteousness-honesty values are gained over the average level. A majority of teachers emphasized that to redound the values; they re-organize and apply the activities in guidebook; apart from the activities in guide book, teachers remark that they mostly use activities like drama, visual materials, watching films and case study. From the point of view the teachers, the first three values that students least reflect to their daily life are patience, self-esteem and peace; the three values which students most reflect to their daily lives are helpfulness, love and righteousness-honesty. According to the parents' views, except from the patience, sociality and tolerance values, all the other values are reflected to the daily life well. To the interviews made, while teachers state that the five factors which affect the gaining process of the values at the most are, socio-economic level of the family, social environment, circle of friends, school and classroom environment, and teacher; parents range these factors as family, school, social environment, friends and media. According to both parents and teachers the main problem in the acquisition process of the values are negative effect of family and social environment. Besides the unsuitability of the activities to the students' level and regional differences, inadequacies of physical opportunities are seen as problems that affect the acquisition process of values. In consequence of analysis, it has been seen that both teacher and parents have got a common opinion about developing parent-teacher collaboration and getting rid of the negative effects of social environment. Furthermore as regards to suggestions of both teachers- and parents, implementations like children being active in learning process, regulations of the activities and learning environment accordingly, contending with the negative effects of media, providing informing occasions to the parents about values can be influential to gain the values to the students. Key Words: Social sciences curriculum, value, value education, parents.