Impact of authentic learning practices on students ' critical thinking skills and attitudes towards social studies

Initially, the teaching was thought to look at the pupil in order to pass on the knowledge and to see if the pupil could repeat them to see if they were learned. It can be said that the learning process, which takes no more than taking and memorizing the information and repeating it in exams, is a tedious process for the diploma. Instead, the student should now be able to use information in real life, be able to comment on what they have learned, explain issues and events, and have the ability to discover and solve problems within the framework of issues. These; The ability to think deeply is to allow the student to manipulate what he has learned to reach syntheses, generalizations, explanations, hypotheses, conclusions or make comments. In this way, it is said that there is a need for a teaching method that can manipulate their knowledge and ideas, allow students to solve problems and discover new meanings and meanings for them. Developing a positive attitude towards the lesson in school can be considered as the first step of developing a positive attitude towards life and society.When the education programs of primary education courses are examined, it is possible to say that one of the courses related to life and society is the Social Studies course. Therefore, it can be said that Social Studies has an important place in developing attitudes and values. Authentic learning is a process that takes place in life and in order for authentic learning to occur in educational institutions, the problems and issues that exist in the real world must be associated with the courses and used. It can be said that critical thinking has an important role in dealing with the problems faced in the real world. Authentic learning can be seen as one of the approaches in which social learning is expected from individuals and can be transferred to problems encountered in daily life and high level skills can be gained. Because authentic learning is appropriate to the student-centered educational process. Authentic learning is designed to address the interests and abilities of students, reveal their current talents and experiences, and contribute to the development of high-level thinking skills.The desired training of the students depends on the learning-teaching process. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of authentic learning practices on students' critical thinking skills and attitudes towards Social Studies course. For this purpose, Social Studies course was carried out with authentic learning practices in the experimental group and the control group was carried out in accordance with the MEB Social Studies curriculum. In the research, pre - test post - test experimental design with control group was preferred. The obtained data were collected and analyzed using quantitative and qualitative data collection techniques. Critical Thinking Scale tarafından developed by Demir (2006), "Social Studies Attitude Scale Ak developed by Akengin and Demir (2010), and the diaries kept by the students and the teacher carrying out the research were used in the study. The study was carried out with 44 students, 21 experimental groups and 23 control groups who were in 4th grade in 2017-2018 academic year. As a result of the research, it was found that authentic learning practices positively affected students' attitudes towards social studies course. In addition, it was found that the authentic learning environment contributed to the development of students' critical thinking skills, and it was concluded that the results obtained in the research were in parallel with the literature in general.