Social studies education in summer holiday: Student and teacher opinions and experiences

Social studies is considered as a course that aims to develop the individual in social areas, ensures that the individual is in an active relationship with his environment, and establishes a link between the past and the future. Effective time periods can be used in in-school and out-of-school learning to help students learn in social studies course. Summer vacation is a supportive time for social studies education. In this sense, summer holidays are an important time period for social studies education. The aim of this research is to determine the experiences of secondary school students and the views of social studies teachers about the place of social studies education in summer holidays. The case study design, one of the qualitative research designs, was adopted in the study. The research was carried out in the summer term of the 2022-2023 academic year and at the beginning of the fall term of the 2022-2023 academic year. The data of the research were collected through student diary and semi-structured interview forms. The data of the research were analyzed through the basic content analysis method, one of the qualitative data analysis methods. As a result of the research, according to the opinions of secondary school students and social studies teachers, it was concluded that summer vacation and social studies education were related. The activities that students perform with their families in the summer serve the purposes of social studies education and show that learning continues in out-of-school environments. According to the results, it can be said that social studies education activities should be continued in a planned manner during the summer holidays. At the same time, it is expected that social studies education would continue during the summer vacation, and a social studies education that can increase the quality of life and the process would be more efficient. At the end of the research, various suggestions for practice and research were presented based on the results.