The effect of newspaper clippings on student's metacognitive awareness levels and attitudes toward the course in social studies course activities

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the use of newspaper clippings in social studies course on the students of the metacognitive awareness levels and attitudes towards the course. The research was carried out with 60 students at one of the public schools in The Black Sea Region of Turkey in 2017-2018 academic year. The study includes 'Unit 2' named Culture and Heritage in Grade 5 Social Studies Lesson. It took 5 weeks both in the experimental group and in the control group. Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) and Social Studies Attitude Scale were applied in the study. Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) was developed by Sperling, Howard, Miller and Murphy (2002) to measure students' Metacognitive Awareness. The validity and reliability studies of the inventory were performed by Karakelle and Saraç (2007), and adapted to Turkish. The Social Studies Attitude Scale was developed to measure students' attitudes towards Social Studies course, and the validity, reliability and discrimination of the attitude scale were examined and evaluated by Yurdakul (2004). The data obtained after the application were analyzed using SPSS 20.0 package program. The data collection tools used in the study were applied at the beginning and end of the study. Pre-test and post-test applications of experimental and control groups were compared with related samples t-test and unrelated samples with t-test, and it was examined if there is a statistically significant difference between pre-test and post-test applications of experimental and control groups. As a result of the research, using newspaper clippings in Social Studies course activites had a significant difference in favor of the experimental group in the metacognitive awareness of the experimental group and the control group students. However, it was observed that their attitudes towards Social Studies course were not effective in making a significant difference between the experimental and control groups.