Investigation of 21 st century social study teachers multiliteracies skills

In the 21st century, individuals need to develop themselves in more than one area to adapt to the developing and changing living conditions. This situation has revealed more than one concept of Multiliteracies. Multiliteracies can be expressed as the ability of an individual to have more than one literacy skill holistically. Considering that the social studies course also has a versatile curriculum, social studies teacher candidates need to develop themselves many literacy skills. In this context, the research aims to examine the 21st-century multi-literacy skills of pre-service social studies teachers according to various variables. The study group of the research consists of teacher candidates studying in the department of social studies teaching in the 2020-2021 academic year at a state university in the Mediterranean Region. In the research, a mixed method, in which quantitative and qualitative methods are used together, was used "21. Century Literacy Skills Scale", Developed by Çevik and Şentürk (2019), As a data collection tool in the quantitative dimension of the research. The obtained data were analyzed with the SPSS 21 program. In the qualitative dimension of the research, the interview form prepared by the researcher was used to get his views on multiple literacy skills. In the analysis of qualitative data, the descriptive analysis method was used. According to the results obtained from the quantitative dimension of the research, the "Entrepreneurship and innovation" skill, which has high levels of "information and technology literacy, critical thinking and problem solving, social responsibility and leadership, career awareness skills" among social studies teacher candidates' multiple literacy skills, is higher than other skills. It was concluded that it was at a moderate level; there was no significant difference in the level of multi-literacy skills in terms of gender, but it differed significantly in favor of women in the "Career Consciousness" sub-dimension; It was seen that there was no statistically significant difference according to grade level and academic achievement (GANO), and the multiple literacy levels of teacher candidates had the same ratio with each other. The results of the qualitative dimension of the study indicated that according to the pre-service social studies teachers, the most important skills that a social studies teacher should have were communication and critical thinking skills. In addition, pre-service teachers stated that they were better at critical thinking and technology literacy skills while they were weaker in communication and entrepreneurship skills compared to other skills. In line with these results, it can be said that the qualitative findings supported the quantitative findings. Keywords: 21st Century Skills, Multiple Literacy, Social Studies, Social studies teacher candidate