Digitalization in social sciences and its reflection to social studies education programs

Digitalization has led to some changes and transformations in the field of social sciences, as in many other fields. This situation also affected the social studies education, which takes its content from social sciences, and made it necessary to reflect the newly produced knowledge, skills and values in the social sciences. When the current social studies curriculum is examined, it has been determined that the knowledge, skills and values required by the digital age are partially included in the curriculum. It is possible to say that the gains in the program are mainly related to technological product-based knowledge and skills. A similar situation is also valid for the social studies teaching undergraduate program. It is seen that the courses and subject areas that can be dealt with in the context of digitalization and digital transformation in the undergraduate program are mainly theoretical courses for instructional technologies. In addition, it has been determined that the contents of the social science courses in the program are far from the current content. In this research, which was carried out according to the descriptive-based qualitative research model, first of all, the changes and transformations in the social sciences were determined, then the social studies curriculum and the social studies teaching undergraduate program were correlated. The research data collected based on document review consists of 8261 academic studies conducted in the context of digitalization and digital transformation in the field of social sciences and 9273 newspaper articles in the subject area of social sciences between the years 2018-2020. Academic studies obtained from Web of Science and DergiPark databases were analyzed by bibliometric analysis method; and newspaper news were analyzed by content analysis method. As a result of the analyzes, a conceptual structure has been created regarding the subject areas that show digitalization and digital transformation in social sciences. With this conceptual structure, acquisition, concept, skill and value association was made for the social studies curriculum. Afterwards, a new course proposal was prepared in the context of digitalization and social studies related to the social studies teaching undergraduate program. It is thought that these associations and suggestions made regarding social studies education programs will contribute to field education.