Teaching thinking and inquiry in social studies: Philosophy for children education

The primary purpose of this research is to determine the effect of the implementation of the Philosophy for Children (P4C) Education program in the Social Studies course on the critical thinking skills, citizenship perceptions and academic achievement of 7th grade students. In the research, intervention/experimental design was preferred among mixed methods designs. In the data collection process of the research, the "Demographic Information Form", "Cornell Critical Thinking Test (X Level)", "Citizenship Perception Scale", and "Academic Achievement Test" were used in the quantitative phase. In the qualitative phase, audio recordings, activity sheets, observation forms, reflective student diaries, and researcher diaries were used. In the analysis of research data, dependent groups t-test and Wilcoxon test were used for quantitative data; Thematic analysis and content analysis were used for qualitative data. The research results show that while there are no significant changes in the students in the control group, there are significant improvements in the critical thinking skills, perceptions of citizenship (democratic citizenship), and academic achievement of the students in the experimental group. In addition, it was determined that there was an improvement in the creative thinking, attentive thinking, and collaborative thinking skills of the experimental group students.