Evaluation of middle school social studies textbooks in the context of innovative thinking

The increasing and widespread use of innovative educational technologies in classroom settings in many countries today leads to a decrease in dependency on textbooks. However, lessons need to be updated, despite the spread of books and alternative practices in school textbooks in the world and Turkey is indispensable to make course material continues to be characterized. According to the findings of many researches, although teachers and students find the current textbooks insufficient in many respects, dependence on the textbooks is maintained for various reasons. The preparation and selection of middle school social studies textbook is required constitutionality in Turkey. Textbooks are prepared taking into account scientific, technological and pedagogical developments in Turkey and the world. The aim of this study is to evaluate and evaluate middle school social studies textbooks in the context of innovative thinking, which is one of the basic skills that students should gain in 2018 MEB social studies curriculum. The material of this study are 5, 6, and 7th grade social studies textbooks which were studied in the 2018-2019 academic year in Turkey. In this study, document analysis method was used. The keywords were determined based on the criteria that were prepared by taking the opinions of the science experts and given the final shape, all the books were scanned and the selected keywords were given on the tables. Descriptive analysis technique was used to analyze the data. The main concepts related to innovative thinking as a result of the analysis are as follows: thinking, discussion, creativity, new idea, innovation for 5th grade social studies book; thinking, discussion, creativity, new idea, innovation for grade 6; thinking, discussion, creativity, new idea and innovation for 7th grade. According to the results of the research, the most used concept is thinking concept for the 5th grade, the concept of discussion for the 6th grade, and the most used concept is thinking for the 7th grade are included in the textbooks.