The analysis of the pedagogic content knowledge regarding the culture and inheritance learning area of social studies teachers and teacher candidates

Pedagogic content knowledge is peculiar to social studies and its transfer is one of the most crucial matters in teaching this subject. For this purpose this study aims to analyze the pedagogic content knowledge of social studies teachers and teacher candidates, regarding the area of "Theme of culture and heritage". In line with this purpose, the study group consists of four social studies teachers who work in Sakarya in 2017-2018 educational year and four social studies teacher candidates who are continuing their fourth year teaching practice lesson. It strives to detect the points such as, how teachers and teacher candidates plan and teach the lesson in the area of culture and heritage learning, which materials they use in the process, how do they do the assessment and evaluation and what types of difficulties they face while teaching the topics. Case study method, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study as it was tried to be presented based on the interviews. For this purpose, data was gathered by means of semi-structured interviews and observation through video recordings with teachers and teacher candidates. Descriptive analysis approach was used in data analysis. The acquired data was evaluated with discussing the content knowledge of teachers and teacher candidates in the area of sixth grade social studies lesson culture and heritage learning. As a result of the study, it was found that, teachers and teacher candidates attach importance to the area of culture and heritage learning, make a plan before the lesson, and use various techniques and methods in the teaching process. It has been reached to the conclusion that the teachers who participated the interview made research from various resources within the scope of document analysis but faced some difficulties in teaching certain topics. At the same time, it is observed that the teachers'in- class performances are similar to each other. Keywords: Social studies, culture and heritage, pedagogic content knowledge, teacher and teacher candidate