Teacher's views about intangible cultural heritage items in social studies teaching

Intangible cultural heritage elements have an important place in social studies teaching. Social studies teachers have a primary role among those who are responsible for transferring the indispensable values of the society, such as traditions and customs, handicrafts, performance products, social rituals and practices, to new generations. For this reason, first of all, social studies teachers should be able to internalize the intangible cultural heritage values and then consciously transfer them to their students. The purpose of this research is to examine the views of social studies teachers on intangible cultural heritage elements. For this purpose, phenomenology, one of the qualitative research designs, was used. The study group of the research was selected by non-probability-based purposive sampling method. In this framework, the participants consist of 12 social studies teachers, 6 female and 6 male, who work as permanent social studies teachers in official state schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the city center of Amasya and have a professional seniority of 10 years or more. As a data collection tool in the research, a semi-structured interview form consisting of open-ended questions was used by the researcher within the framework of themes including the social studies curriculum of intangible cultural heritage elements, social studies textbooks, social studies field and awareness of social studies teachers. The obtained data were calculated with the reliability calculation formula of Miles and Huberman. As a result of the calculation, the reliability was found to be 0.84. The analysis of the data was carried out with the descriptive analysis method. As a result of the research, it was determined that the awareness levels of social studies teachers towards the intangible cultural heritage items that are under protection by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization are insufficient. Beside, it has been concluded that the contents of the intangible cultural heritage elements in the social studies curriculum and textbooks are insufficient. Within the scope of the research results, it has been suggested to increase the intangible cultural heritage elements in the social studies course curriculum and textbooks in order to increase awareness about intangible cultural heritage.