Social studies teachers' social justice perceptions and experiences

Social, economic and cultural changes are happening in the 21st century. These changes affected educational approaches in this period. One of the aims of education is training citizens. And many new features such as respect for diversity and to be tolerant are seeming important for global citizenship. In addition, social justice is also one of the major feature for global citizenship. Social justice aims to provide all individuals to feel safe and meeting their all needs. Also, social justice aims to eliminate economic, social and political discriminations. Thus, awareness of social justice seems to be important for global citizens. When we looking at curriculums, we can observe that social studies course aims to raise citizenship education in Turkey. Educators expect that the social justice education should have a place in social studies course for raising a global citizen. The aim of this study was to identify social studies teachers' social justice perceptions and experiences. The study was designed in accordance with the phenomenographical design that is a qualitative research method. The participants were selected based on maximum variation sampling method that is a purposive sampling method. Firstly, researcher was interviewed ten teachers. After these interviews, researcher was selected four teachers in order to observe their lesson experiences about social justice. Four teachers were selected according to their world-view, professional experience, their schools' socioeconomic status, social justice awareness and social justice education experiences in their classrooms. Researcher was observed four teachers' social justice experiences in their classrooms through participant observation along five months. After observation process, researcher was interviewed with all teachers last time. The data were gathered from interviews and observations were analysed with inductive analysis technique using NVivo 10 qualitative data analysis software. In the study, it was found that the most of social studies teachers evaluated the concept of social justice as equality and justice. As for the development of social justice perceptions, the most of teachers pointed it their families and educations. Most of teachers emphasized that there are problems related to women's and disability rights in Turkey about social justice. Most of teachers evaluated that the concept of social justice education as creating equal opportunities, teaching social justice concept and giving the values of social justice to students. Participants said that most of teachers should be a model with positive behaviours for students and to be respectful to different identities. Most of teachers stated that the social studies course have three objectives. These objectives are raising citizens, preparing students to real life and teaching the social sciences. Also, most of teachers stated that the social justice was an important part of social studies course. Most of teachers stated that the elements related to social justice were not sufficiently included in the text books, and teaching activities that in order to improve students' awareness of social justice remained limited. As a result, most of teachers' perceive about social justice concept was seen in a limited way and also, most of teachers' classroom experiences was seen limited. Considering the findings of this study, it is suggested that concept of social justice directly should be a place in social studies curriculum, cooperation between universities and MEB to increase the teachers' awareness about social justice and investigating action researches in colloboration with NGO's about social justice. Key Words: Social studies, social justice, social studies education, social justice education