Orienting students' space perception skills in social studies course impact of its applications

In this study, the effect of orienteering practices on the academic success of students in the 6th grade social studies course was investigated. The research was conducted with 6th grade students in a secondary school in Boyabat district of Sinop province in the fall semester of the 2022-2023 academic year. In the research, there is an experimental group (N = 35) and a control group (N = 36). While the lessons were conducted with orienteering activities in the experimental group, they were conducted according to the curriculum-based teaching in the control group. The research was conducted based on the pretest-posttest control group design of the quasi-experimental method. "Spatial Thinking Skills Test (MEDBET)" developed by Sönmez (2019) was used as a pre-test and post-test as a data collection tool in the study.In the study, the data obtained from MEDBET was analyzed using the SPSS 22.0 package program. In addition, the answers given by the students to the questions in MEDBET in the pre-test and post-test are presented in the form of frequency/percentage tables. According to the research results, while there was no statistically significant difference between the MEDBET pre-test average scores of the experimental and control groups, a significant difference was detected between the post-test average scores in favor of the experimental group. According to the results of the research, social studies lessons conducted with orienteering were found to be more effective in developing students' spatial perception skills than curriculum-based teaching