Understanding social studies curricula as a political text in the context of citizenship education

While developing curriculum, political foundations which are among the fundamentals of the curriculum affect the curriculum to a certain extent. There is a field of understanding the curriculum as a political text in the re-conceptualization movement, which aims to understand the impact of political foundations on the curriculum. It is thought that the curriculum in which the political effects can be clearly seen is the social studies curriculum for researching the curriculum comprehension as a political text. As the aim of social studies was to raise citizens, this research related to social studies curriculum has been designed in the context of citizenship education. In this study, in order to see the political effects in social studies curricula, 1998, 2005 and 2018 social studies curricula (SSC) which were prepared in different government periods were analyzed in the context of citizenship education. The aim of this study was to try to understand how policy has an impact on the curricula of social studies curricula in the context citizenship education as a political text. There were three research questions and sub questions related to this purpose. This research consists of two stages. At first stage; 1998, 2005 and 2018 SSCs in Turkey were discussed in the context of citizenship education. Overall aims / learning outcomes verbals were examined in terms of knowledge, understanding, value, skills and attitudes. The main target components / student acquisitions were analyzed in terms of value, attitude and skills. Concepts and name groups were analyzed in general aim / learning outcomes. Secondly stage in the research, according to the findings of the first stage, semi-structured face to face interviews were held with the social studies teachers and social studies field experts, and the reasons of the changes in the SSCs within the context of citizenship education and political aspects were investigated. This research was modeled by qualitative research method and designed by nested multi-case study. Document analysis was used in the first stage of this research to collect data and in the second stage, data was collected through semi-structured interview methods. In this research, in order to reach the answer of the questions related to the purpose, the descriptive and content analysis was used in the first stage and the analysis in the second stage was made with content analysis. In the first stage, document review was done as data collection method by comparing 1998, 2005 and 2018 SSCs. At the second stage, semi-structured interview forms were prepared based on the first stage data and the interviews were conducted. Participants were determined by the criterion sampling method, which is one of the purposeful sampling methods. The interviews were held with 7 social studies teachers who applied all three programs and 8 academicians who were social studies specialists. In the second stage of this research, the data was coded with Maxqda 2018.1 data analysis program. As a result of the analysis of the interview data, the themes of explanation and definition, reason, criticism and suggestion were created according to the meaning relations; and findings according to political / non-political categories are presented under these themes. As a result; regarding the first research question it was concluded that the curricula should be analyzed in depth and as a whole; curriculum development processes cannot be fully operated; and while radical changes in the curriculum structure were made in the transition from 1998 SSC to 2005 SSC, the changes in the transition from 2005 SSC to 2018 SSC can be considered as updates. Regarding the second research question, it was concluded that 1998 SSC was completely different from 2005 and 2018 SSCs; national history and culture issues were decreased and universal content was increased; collective living and collaboration was changed to individuality; values and skills were added; and some of these changes were caused by political effects. Regarding the third research question, it is understood that there were problems of implementation rather than changes in SSCs in every period, and political effects were present in every period, although the reasons for political effects on SSCs vary from period to period. It has been understood that the reasons for the problems encountered in citizenship education and training of citizens in SSCs are not being able to reach consensus on some issues and not answering the question of "What kind of a citizen is wanted?" clearly. And it was concluded that the 1998 SSC was more nationalist, statist and had collective living approach; while the 2005 SSC was neo-liberal and had new conservative understanding; and 2018 SSC was somewhat similar to both 2005 and 1998 SSCs.