The effects of materials, methods and techniques used in social studies teaching on student achievement: A meta-analysis study

The aim of this study is to examine the common and general effect sizes of the studies (thesis, article) whose dependent variable is Social Studies course achievement between 2005 and 2020 in the field of Social Studies teaching. For this purpose, "Do the materials used in Social Studies affect the achievement of the students?" and "Do the methods and techniques used in Social Studies affect the achievement of students?" answers were sought. The study was carried out using the meta-analysis method. After examining the field literature of the study, the inclusion characteristics and inclusion criteria were determined. Experimental studies were included in this research. In this study, the scanning of the data to be analyzed was carried out between 12.10.2018 and 30.10.2020 using Google Scholar, Eric, Ebscohost, Doaj, Asos, Open Access, Dergipark, Jstar Journals databases. While scanning, " Achievement in Social Studies", "Course achievement in Social Studies", "Social Studies teaching", "Social Studies", "Academic Achievement", "Materials used in Social Studies", "Methods and techniques used in Social Studies", "Materials The search process was carried out using the words "used in Social Studies", "methods and techniques used in Social Studies", "Social Studies teaching". After the screening process, 359 studies were examined that examined the effects of materials, methods and techniques used in Social Studies teaching on student achievement. A total of 148 studies were excluded because 66 of them did not have appropriate data and did not meet the criteria for inclusion, 21 of them included excerpts from the thesis and 61 studies were not experimental and quasi-experimental. 211 studies that comply with the inclusion criteria were combined using the meta-analysis method, and the effect sizes of 211 studies and the overall effect sizes of these studies were calculated. If the data of some of these studies are more than one, that study was evaluated as a separate study in order to obtain objective results and the effect size of 245 studies in total was calculated. 135 of 245 studies examined the effect of materials on academic achievement, 110 of them examined the effect of methods and techniques on academic achievement. While analyzing the data, sample size, arithmetic mean and standard deviation values from the post-test data of the experimental and control groups of each research were used. In the analysis of the data, a package program, which is a trial version of Comprehensive Meta Analysis v3.0 (CMA), was used. In the research, comments were made based on the effect size index of Hedges g. The evaluation of the criteria has been interpreted according to the classification of Cohen (1988). As a result of the analysis, it was seen that the materials, methods and techniques used in Social Studies teaching had a very large positive effect on student achievement. Considering the student achievement of the materials used in Social Studies courses, it was determined that the studies with the highest effect size among the study types belong to doctoral dissertations. On the other hand, the effect of article studies on the method and technical studies used in Social Studies lessons is more. According to the years of the study, the effect level of the material and method-technical studies between 2005-2009 was found to be higher. It has been determined that the materials using different sensory organs have a greater effect on learning. Since the Social Studies course is a lesson that is shaped on abstract concepts, it is suggested that different materials and methods should be used in the lessons since the use of materials, methods and techniques in lessons will increase the achievement and understanding of the lesson.