Evaluation of the subject historical thinking of the social studies curriculum

This research is a qualitative work which consists of subjects in social studies programmes, and their evaluation in the view of historical thinking abilities. The students should come out of being passive receivers and they should be made active individuals who can think analytically, can interpret through historical events and who have abilities to search history. The number of the studies for improving abilities of historical thinking, also be increased in the teaching process. Therefore, evaulation of historical thinking abilities is important in the social studies programme of historical topics. The aim of the research is to examine the Turkish Revolution History and Kemalism subject of first term units through abilities of historical thinking. In order to reach this aim conversation and observation technique was used. 18 students in different levels and 5 volunteered social studies teachers were interviewed related to the topic 2013-2014 academic year, in a middle class of a governmental secondary school. At the end of the interviews done with students in different times and the ones with the teachers, 299 pages of data documents were formed. In analyzing the data, "inductional content analysis" was used. Through the first term which was 6 hours in a week, 12 weeks total. At the end of the observations done, 45 hours of observation data was obtained and 147 pages of detailed observation form documents were formed. The observation was done through the half constructed area survey method. According to the result of student interviews it was found that students were generaly curious about historical topics but they could not put upper level steps in life and as a result could not evaulate conditions with the help of upper level historical thinking abilities. Moreover, they could not pass further information and comprehension steps. According to the data gained from the observation results, it was seen that generally teacher and exam focused method in teaching was used. At the end of the research, suggestions related to the topic were placed. KEYWORDS: Historical Thinking, History, Turkish Revolution History and Kemalism.