Examining the place of social problems in social studies course books

Social problems are activities that are objective, universal, created by the society itself, cause harm to the society, affect people, grow by accumulating over time, and are solved jointly and actively. It has been observed that there are many opinions about the characterizing of an event as a social problem and who decides it. The main problem is under what conditions the situation that harms society changes. What social problems have in common is that more than one person describes social events as problems. The important point to consider here is that while an event in society is seen as a social problem for one person, it is not seen for another. It has been observed that the quality between subjective and objective behaviors of people in society emerges with the differences in the economic, socio-cultural, and political experiences of individuals or groups. It emerged not only through experiences but also as organized communication (Çoban, 2022). This research aims to reveal how social problem issues are addressed in the learning areas and contents of the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th grade Social Studies textbooks, which were prepared and put into practice in 2018 and used in the 2022-2023 academic year. The document analysis method, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the research. In the research, the Social Studies Course Curriculum was updated by the Ministry of National Education in 2018 and the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th grade Social Studies Course textbooks prepared according to this program were used. Within the framework of the data obtained in the research, the distribution of social problems in the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th grade Social Studies course textbooks and learning areas was examined, and within the framework of the results obtained, it was found that social problems differ according to classes and learning areas.