The effect of activities based historical empathy in social studies lesson on students' historical empathy skills and success

The aim of this research is to investigate the effects of activities based on historical empathy on social empathy skills and achievements. This research was conducted with 42 seventh grade students in a secondary school affiliated with the Ministry of National Education in Pamukova district of Sakarya province in the 2018-2019 academic year. In the research, a quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test control group was used. In this research, historical empathy scale developed by Çalışkan and Demir (2019) was used as a means of data collection. The scale consists of two sub-dimensions and 12 questions, namely the affective dimension of historical empathy and cognitive dimension of historical empathy. In order to measure academic achievement, the achievement test which was developed by the researcher about Production, Distribution and Consumption for the learning field was used. The pre-test was applied to predetermined classes and one of the two classes which are equal to each other was determined as the control group (N=22) and the other was determined as the experimental group (N=20). In the control group, the lessons were taught as prescribed by the program. In the experimental group, the lessons were taught with the events based on historical empathy. At the end of the implementation phase, achievement test and historical empathy scale were applied to the experimental and control groups simultaneously. . In the analysis of the collected data, SPSS 24 and TAP (Test Analysis Program) programs were used to develop the academic achievement test. Descriptive of the students in order to reveal demographic characteristics statistics (percentage, frequency, mean and standard deviation) were used. Data testing was tested with the Skewness and Kurtosis values and Shapiro-Wilks test results. Two-way variance analysis (Two-way Repeated Measures ANOVA) was used for repeated measurements in the analysis of normal distributed variables. According to the results of the research, it was observed that activities based on historical empathy were more effective in increasing academic achievement. However, when examined by gender, although there was no significant difference in the academic achievement of female students, it was seen the great difference in the acamedic achievement of male students. It is seen that when social studies course is based on historical empathy activities, students are more effective in increasing their historical empathy levels. It is seen that the lesson, which is conducted with activities based on historical empathy, is more effective in increasing students' cognitive empathy levels. It was seen that the time course of the lesson, which was conducted with activities based on historical empathy, was not effective in increasing the affective empathy levels of the students. When the total scores of female and male students 'cognitive empathy were examined, it was seen that female students' cognitive empathy scores were higher than male students. It was seen that the lessons taught by activities based on historical empathy were more effective in increasing the historical empathy levels of both male and female students.