The effect of outdoor education on attitude, achievement and level of knowledge retention in primary social studies course

The aim of this study is to determine the effects of outdoor education activities in social studies lessons in regards to the students' academic achievements, their attitudes towards the social studies lesson and their level of recalling the information. In this study, embedded mixed method which is one of the mixed methods is used. In the quantitative part of the study, quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest control group was used. Interviews were conducted for the qualitative part of method. In the research, the research was carried out with the study group using the proper sample selection. The study group of the research consisted of two classes from the 4th grade, one experimental group (n=33) and one control group (n=31) from the government school with the middle socio-economic level in Buca district of İzmir province in 2018-2019 academic year. During the process of 6 weeks, with experimental group, the 4th grade social studies course on learning areas "people, places and environments", outdoor education activities and outdoor teaching methods were carried out, on the other hand, Social Studies Course Curriculum content and activities were carried out with the control group. As a means of collection of the data the "Academic Achievement Test", created by the researcher within the scope of the learning area "People, Places and Environments" and "The Attitude Scale Social Studies for the 4th grade elementary school" developed by Ulu-Kalın and Topkaya (2017) by using the pre-test before practice and post-test after the practice were used. Moreover, in order to obtain the views of the students about the experimental process, "Semi-Structured Interview Form" was applied to the students at the end of the practice process. After the experimental process with the practice teacher interviews and observations through the researcher's diary to describe the experimental process were conducted. The Academic Achievement Test was applied as a retention test to measure the level of students' recalling knowledge 4 weeks after the end of practices. Statistical analyzes of quantitative data were carried out with descriptive statistics, t-test for independent samples and two-way ANOVA for mixed measurements. Content analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. In accordance with the results of the study, academic achievement levels, attitudes towards social studies course and persistence level of the knowledge of experimental group of students, taking social studies courses outside the classroom with outdoor education activities, were found to be significantly higher than the control group taking the Social Studies Course and activities in class in accordance with the Social Studies Course Curriculum. It was concluded from the interviews with the experimental group that the students have learned permanently by seeing, touching and feeling outside of the classroom, learning by doing the actual things by having fun and active participation of the lesson. Teachers' opinions and observations of the researcher support these results as well. As a result, it was found out that the application of outdoor education activities in social studies course teaching increased the students' level of success, influenced their attitudes towards the course in a positive way and contributed to the level of recalling their knowledge positively.