Effect of oral and written literary products to academic success, attitude and permanency in social studies teaching

The purpose of this study is to find out to what extent oral and written literary product material use in Social Studies course -based on "Literature Based Social Studies Teaching (LBSST)" method- affects the academic achievement, attitude and permanence of students. In this study pre-test post-test control group experimental design was used. In this study -designed in accordance with pre-test post-test control group experimental design- oral and written literary product material use in Social Studies and traditional-teacher centred instruction method are independent variables; while attitude of students to Social Studies course and the level of permanence for their learnings are dependent variables. The research was carried out in the 2nd semester of 2016-2017 academic year with a total of 160 students, 80(40+40) from 6th grades and 80(40+40) from 7th grades in Rıfat Ilgaz Secondary School in Esenyurt, İstanbul. Neutrally two sections were chosen for 6th grade work and one of them was assigned as experimental group while the other was control group. Similarly for 7th grade work two sections were chosen and one was assigned as experimental group while the other was control group. The courses in experimental group were applied in line with "LBSST" method together with activities developed by the researcher according to oral and written literary product material use. The courses in control group were taught with traditional course materials in line with 2016 Social Studies Education Teacher's Guide. The data in this research were collected with "Academic Achievement Test (AAT)" and "Social Sciences Attitude Scale (SSAS)". AAT and SSAS were applied to the research groups as pre-test before the units and as post-test after the units taught. On the 21st day following the post-test another "AAT" was carried out to see their level of permanence for the learnings. In the analysis process of data descriptive statistics -like frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum- and various tests -like unpaired t-test and paired t-test were benefited. Unpaired t-test was used for the comparison of two independent groups' averages while paired t-test was used for the two dependent groups. For the analysis of research data the statistical results were obtained via "STATISTICAL PACKED FOR SOCIAL SCIENCES (SPSS)" 22.0. According to the test results the experimental group students show a higher level of academic achievement and their permanence level is better when compared with the control group students. It has been deduced that oral and written literary product use in Social Studies course enables more effective, meaningful and permanent learnings in comparison with traditional teaching method. The findings obtained from attitude scale applied in the experimental and control groups as pre and post tests show that "LBSST" method positively increases student attitude towards Social Studies course and that the results are for the benefit of experimental group. Keywords: Literature based social studies teaching, social studies, attitude scale, permanence and academic achievement.