The effects of the social studies course structured according to the international baccalaureate programme on the development of efficient citizenship skills and values

Citizenship education is required to maintain the social order and to gain attitudes, skills and values that are effective in reaching the level of modern civilizations for societies. While governments determine their own education programmes, they include citizenship education either as a separate subject or integrated with other disciplines. By means of citizenship education, it is aimed to raise individuals who are respectful of human rights and freedoms, competent in national and international skills and values, contributor, and who research and question. In our country, besides the national programs, international programs approved by the Ministry of Education are also implemented. International Baccalaureate Programme® is one of them. International Baccalaureate Programs care about individuals to develop intercultural understanding and to develop respect among people. These programmes, aiming to raise individuals who learn lifelong and who are sensitive, are implemented by integrating with the national programme in some schools of our country. The research was carried out with middle school 5th grade students of a private school implementing these programmes. The purpose of the research is to examine the effect of the Social Studies courses structured according to the MEB curriculum and International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme (IB MYP) on the development of citizenship skills and values. The research was conducted with action research, one of the qualitative research methods. Findings; The asked open-ended questions consist of lesson observations, semi-structured observations and data obtained from the teacher's diary. In the analysis of the findings obtained from the sources related to the Baccalaureate Programs and the national program, the document analysis method was used. According to the data obtained from the findings of the research, it was concluded that the missions of the IB programme and MEB Programme are compatible and complementary to each other, and that Social Studies courses integrated with IB MYP and MEB Programme contribute to the development of attitudes, skills and values of students in line with their citizenship skills and values. It has been observed that Social Studies course national programme structured with IB MYP contributes to raise students who know their rights and freedoms, citizenship duties and responsibilities, and to raise students as sensitive, empathic individuals who possess research, inquiry, creative and critical thinking skills. It has been observed that especially IB learner profiles and learning approaches contribute to raise sensitive individuals who care about effective citizenship skills and values. In addition, the vision and mission of the school implementing the IB Programme have been shown to play an important role in increasing the impact of the programme. Key Words: Effective citizenship, learning approach, learner profile, skill, value