Patriotism attitudes and views of preservice social studies teachers within the context of citizenship

The purpose of the study is to determine the patriotism attitudes and views of preservice social studies teachers. In the study, mixed method including qualitative and quantitative methods was used. For this reason, one of the mixed methods designs, convergent design mixed method was the main design of this very study. Seven universities from different geographical regions of Turkey were determined for the study group based on maximum variation. Sample group of the quantitative part of the study consists of 1467 preservice teachers receiving education in all grades of the department of social studies in the aforementioned seven universities during the academic year of 2017-2018. On the other hand, study group of the qualitative part of the study consists of 50 preservice teachers, who were selected voluntarily from the fourth grade students in the sample group that was determined for the quantitative part. Data of the quantitative part of the study were obtained with the "Patriotism Attitude Scale", whereas data of the qualitative part were obtained with a structured interview form. Quantitative data were analyzed with DFA Analysis, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis test via LISREL and SPSS package softwares. On the other hand, qualitative data were analyzed with content analysis method. According to the results of the study, it was determined that the preservice social studies teachers had moderate levels of blind patriotism and high levels of constructive patriotism and there were significant differences between blind and constructive patriotism attitude levels according to the variables of university and residential area; between blind patriotism attitude levels according to the variable of father's job; and between constructive patriotism attitude levels according to the variable of mother's job. On the other hand, it was determined that there was no significant difference in patriotism attitude levels according to the variables of gender, class and family's economic condition. It was determined that patriotism definitions of the preservice social studies teachers were mainly associated with themes of "working", "adopting – protecting" and "love". It was concluded that patriotism was considered important as it provided a better living environment and sustainment of a nation; patriots needed to have universal and national values and a consciousness; patriots needed to be conscious for their country and fulfill their civic duty; social studies lesson was appropriate for the patriotism value; factors such as family, teacher and history education were mainly effective in patriotism education. The preservice social studies teachers associated patriotism with Ataturk as a person, with National Struggle as an incident, with Anatolia as a place and the concepts of "love", "land-country-homeland", "diligence", "flag" and "nation". Also, they considered teacher's incompetence and theoretical teaching of the lessons basic problems in patriotism education. In order to solve patriotism education problem of preservice social studies teachers, it can be suggested to increase their competence and create awareness of history by arranging excursions. Keywords: Social Studies, Citizenship, Blind Patriotism, Constructive Patriotism, Patriotism Education.