Views of Turkish Social Studies Teacher Candidates about History Lessons Taught in Social Studies Teacher Education Program

The aim of this study is to determine the views of Turkish social studies teacher candidates about history lessons, as taught in the social studies teacher education program of the Faculty of Education at Karadeniz Technical University. Survey research based on a qualitative research methodology was used in this study. An open-ended questionnaire and semistructured interviews were used in the research as data collection instruments. 100 final-year teacher candidates participated in the questionnaire and 12 candidates were interviewed. The data collected showed that the history lessons they were taught did not provide them with enough benefits, because of insufficient time and because of teacher-centered approaches. Apart from this, more than half of the teacher candidates thought that the education they were given gave them adequate ability to teach history topics in the social studies curriculum effectively in social studies lessons when they became teachers. History lessons about Turkish history, especially the Seljuks, Ottomans and the Turkish Republic, were seen as the most important lessons. Teacher candidates thought that these lessons were important for transmitting knowledge of Turkish history and culture, which reflects the classic history teaching tradition in Turkey.


Introduction:
Social studies is an important subject for transmitting skills, attitudes and knowledge about social life to students, and emerged first in the United Sates (Martorella, 1996); it entered the Turkish education system in 1968, also with the name 'social studies' (Öztürk, 2015;Aslan, 2016). There have been different applications of it in terms of its content and aims in the Turkish education system since 1968. Although this subject is called social studies in the Turkish education system, the content of the curriculum mainly consists of the topics history, geography and civics (Aslan, 2016). There were minor changes to social studies lessons in Turkey after the military coup of 1980. An important decision was taken about the subject, and social studies was removed from the curriculum in Turkey in 1985; national history, national geography and knowledge of civics replaced it (MGSB, 1985, p. 285 cited in Aslan, 2016. The main aim of this development was to increase love of country and the patriotic values of students. There were further important changes in the structure of the education system of Turkey at the end of the 1990s because of domestic political developments, globalization and the European Union membership process that took place between Turkey and the European Union. The Turkish government took an important decision about the length of compulsory education, increasing it to eight years in 1998, which led to new changes in the primary education curriculum. National history and national geography lessons were removed from primary education, and social studies lessons were included in the curriculum from the fourth to seventh grades (Aslan, 2016). Social studies, which is a multi-disciplinary subject, is one of the main lessons taught in the fourth to seventh grades in Turkey at the moment. Students are taught about history, geography, civics, culture, economy, sociology and technology in this social studies course. The aim of this course is to educate effective and active democratic citizens who know their rights and responsibilities in society (MEB, 2016).
Social studies lessons conducted in secondary schools have different units devoted to history topics. Examining the current social studies curriculum, we see that there are four units directly related to history, which are Travelling in Turkish History, Turks on the Silk Road, Turkey Step by Step, and Understanding Kemal Ataturk (MEB, 2016). These units aim to give basic historical knowledge, mainly of Turkish history, to students, helping them to construct their identity. Social studies teachers need to know both historical knowledge and how to teach this knowledge in their lessons if they are to teach history topics in secondary schools. Accordingly, social studies teachers have to be given an adequate education in history topics and shown how to teach these topics in the per-service teacher education process.
Teachers of social studies lessons are being educated in the education faculties of social studies teacher education programs in Turkey. They are required to take a four-year undergraduate course, and, if they are successful in a national exam (KPSS), they can be appointed as a social studies teacher in a Turkish secondary school. They are expected to gain knowledge and experience on how to teach social studies at the secondary school level.
Social studies teacher candidates are required to take lessons in the fields of social science, pedagogy and general culture. If we examine the curriculum of different social studies teacher education programs, it seems as though there are different lessons. For example, some courses on the social studies teacher education program at the University of Gazi, which is a well-  Keçe (2014) carried out research about the perceptions of history and social studies teachers about some history concepts taught through metaphors which indicated that teacher candidates had a low perception of the concept of democracy.
Another study aimed to seek the opinions and experience of history and social studies teacher candidates about the importance of visiting museums in history education, which showed that museum visits increased the curiosity and interest of teacher candidates (Yılmaz ve Egüz, 2015). Furthermore, Şahin and Çetinoğlu (2016) conducted a quantitative research study to illuminate the perceptions of social studies teacher candidates about related courses and their implementation in their departments at six different universities. The data showed that teacher candidates demonstrated the most interest in history lessons in social studies teacher education programs. Besides this, the research revealed that lessons and teaching approaches used in these lessons should be examined so as to eliminate any problems that occurred in teaching approaches and lessons.
Although there has been research on different aspects of history education carried out in social studies teacher education departments in Turkey, there is not enough research about the views of social studies teacher candidates about the history lessons taught to them in their departments. There is only one qualitative study, carried out on a newly established social studies teacher education program at the university of Kilis (Kuzğun and İncili, 2016). This study had two aims: first of all, to determine the level of interest of teacher candidates in the history lessons taught in their program, and second the views of teacher candidates about the benefits of history lessons. The research indicated that teacher candidates believed in the importance of history lessons; the data also showed that new teaching methods and approaches should be included in history lessons in social studies teacher education departments (Kuzğun and İncili, 2016). More studies should be carried out to identify problems and assess the teaching quality of history lessons in the curriculum of social studies teacher education programs in different universities. With this in mind, this research was conducted with teacher candidates of a well-established social studies teacher education program of the Faculty of Education at Karadeniz Technical University in Trabzon.

Research Design:
This study is a survey research based on a qualitative research methodology. The main aim of using qualitative methodology is to gather deep information from participants (Strauss and Corbin, 1996;Cohen and Manion, 1997;Bell, 1997). This methodology uses different data collection tools in focus, involving an interpretive, naturalistic approach (Cohen and Manion, 1997;Robson, 1998;Cresswell, 2003). An open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interview format are used to determine the views of social studies teacher candidates in this research.
The aim of this study is to determine the views of Turkish social studies teacher candidates about history lessons taught in the social studies teacher education program in the Faculty of Education at Karadeniz Technical University. The research also aims to answer the following questions: • What are the views of social studies teacher candidates about the benefits of history lessons taught in the social studies teacher education program?
• What are the views of social studies teacher candidates about the teaching approaches used in history lessons taught in the social studies teacher education program?
• What are the views of social studies teacher candidates about the importance of history lessons taught in the social studies teacher education program?

Subjects:
The subjects of this research are the final-year social studies teacher candidates in the Faculty at the Karadeniz Technical University in Trabzon, Turkey. There are three different classes in the final year of the social studies teacher education department, with a total of 118 final-year teacher candidates. All final-year teacher candidates were asked to participate in the research to ensure representation of teacher candidates in this study, and 100 teacher candidates (45 male and 55 female) participated in the questionnaire. It is believed that the respondents in this research could provide deep data to address the research problems posed by this study.
The social studies teacher candidates who participated in the study were from all over Turkey.
The research does not need sampling for the open-ended questionnaire such a great majority of teacher candidates participated in the study. After the implementation of the questionnaire, 12 (6 male and 6 female) teacher candidates, chosen by purposive sampling, were interviewed with a semi-structured interview.

Data Collection Tools:
The open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interviews are the main data collection

Data Analysis:
A qualitative content analysis approach was used to analyze the data collected via the semistructured interview and open-ended questionnaire in this research. Various responses to the questions were grouped into a logical set of discrete categories in the content analysis (Hall and Hall, 1996). In this research, two researchers separately read the answers to the questions from the open-ended questionnaire several times, and codes and categories were created.
Secondly, a double analysis of the data by the two researchers was made to test the reliability of the data. With this in mind, the technique of Miles and Hubermas (1994) was used to assess the validity of the gathered data. The formula 'P (Agreement Percentage) = [Na (Agreement) / Nd (Agreement) + Nd (Disagreement) x 100' was used in order to calculate the reliability of the study (Miles and Hubermas, 1994). The reliability was found to be 84+%, and the gathered data were accepted as reliable. The frequency of categories was determined and then presented table form. The data were analyzed using a content analysis approach during the analysis process of the interviews.

Findings:
The aim of this research is to determine the views of social studies teacher candidates about history lessons taught in the social studies teacher education program at Karadeniz Technical University. The findings of this research are as follows:

Findings of the Open-Ended Questionnaire:
The first sub-problem of the research concerns the views of social studies teacher candidates about the benefits of history lessons taught in social studies teacher education program. The first question in this section asked what are the benefits of history lessons taught to the students in the education faculty up to now. As can be seen from Table 1, the frequency of positive answers to this question is low. For example, only 33 teacher candidates believed that history lessons increased a teacher candidate's historical knowledge. Besides this, developing historical consciousness (f=16) was seen as a secondary important benefit of history lessons.
Furthermore, 18 social studies teacher candidates did not answer this question. Teacher candidates also declared the reasons why they thought that history lessons did not provide sufficient benefits to them. Table 2 shows that time inadequacy of history lessons (N=36) and the use of lectures (N=30) were seen as the most important reasons why history lessons did not provide adequate benefits to teacher candidates. The above data indicate that history lessons taught in social studies departments did not provide adequate benefits, according to the answers of the majority of teacher candidates.
Another question was whether or not history lessons taught in social studies teacher education departments provided trainees with sufficient ability to teach history topics in the social studies curriculum in schools when they become teachers. More than half of the teacher candidates (N=55) thought that the education they were given provided them with adequate ability to teach the history topics on the social studies curriculum effectively in lessons when they become teachers. On the other hand, nearly half of the teacher candidates (N= 43) pointed out that history lessons did not provide them with enough ability to teach history topics on the social studies curriculum in schools when they become teachers.
The second sub-question of the research concerned the views of social studies teacher candidates about the teaching methods and approaches used in history lessons taught on the social studies teacher education program. The first question in this section was what the most commonly used teaching approach was in the history lessons that the teacher candidates were taught in their department. Table 4 indicates that nearly all teacher candidates (N=93) stated that lectures given by teacher educators was the main teaching approach to teaching history in

Enough time is not devoted to lessons 36
Using only lectures in lessons 30 Topics are taught in a superficial way 16 Proper teaching approaches are not used in lessons 9 Topics are taught with no connection with the present day 5 Using distance education for some lessons 5 Lessons are exam-oriented 5

Unanswered 6
Total 112 the department of social studies. 24 teacher candidates thought that the secondary teaching approach was the question and answer method in their history lessons. The above answers show that the history lessons in the social studies teacher education department were mainly based on teacher-centered methods and approaches.
Teacher candidates were also asked about the sufficiency of the teaching approaches used in history lessons. More than half of the teacher candidates (N=57) stated that the teaching methods and approaches were not sufficient, because teachers used only lecturing in their lessons. Besides this, 25 teacher candidates declared that teaching methods and approaches which did not provide active learning were not sufficient. Furthermore, teacher candidates (N=10) added that lecturers in history lessons did not use visual materials in their lessons, and, as a result of this, history lessons were not taught sufficiently well.
Social studies teacher candidates were also asked what kind of teaching methods approaches should be used in history lessons in their department. As can be seen from Table 4, teacher candidates believed they should expect different teaching approaches to be used in their history lessons. They thought that active learning approaches such as question and answer (N=20), discussion (N=18), sightseeing (N=13), drama (N=11) and discovery learning (N=7) should be used in their lessons.  should be used in history lessons in their department.
The above explanations indicate that history lessons were not based on student-centered teaching approaches, and lecturers who were responsible for teaching history lessons in the social studies teacher education department did not use active teaching approaches such as historical empathy, drama, historical thinking etc.
In another questions, teacher candidates were asked what kind of assignments they were given to do in history lessons. Teacher candidates gave different answers to this question, and nearly half of them (N=41) stated that they were given responsibility for preparing presentations as an assignment. On the other hand, 33 teacher candidates declared that they were not given any assignment to do, and 18 of them gave no answer to this question. The above information shows that teacher candidates were mainly given the task of preparing a presentation as an assignment in their history lessons in the social studies teacher education department.
In this section, another question concerns the importance of the history lessons that the teacher candidates were taught, in their eyes. With this in mind, they were asked to list history lessons in terms of importance.  Social studies teacher candidates were also asked to list those history lessons which were not on the curriculum in the social studies teacher education department, but were seen as important for them. Only 20 teacher candidates answered this question, and they thought that World History (20) and European History (16) were important to them.

Findings of the Semi-Structured Interview:
In this section, the results of semi-structured interviews carried out with 12 social studies teacher candidates will be presented. The following points of view emerged after examination of the data:

Social studies teacher candidates found history lessons useless:
All participants of the interviews believed that history lessons taught during the education process of social studies teacher candidates were not adequately beneficial to them. The above quotes indicate that teacher candidates find history lessons useless because of disconnected teaching approaches and emphasis on memorization.

History lessons did not provide enough skills to social studies teacher candidates to enable them to teach history topics on the social studies curriculum:
History education should develop the skills of teacher candidates. In particular, problemsolving and historical thinking skills should be developed by history lessons during the teacher preparation process. The data indicate that history lessons did not develop the skills of teacher candidates. The comments of teacher candidates are as follows: The (A female SSTC 6) The above comments show that lecturers in history lessons did not pay attention to the skills which should be taught in these lessons.

Teacher-centered methods used in history lessons:
Using traditional and teacher-centered teaching approaches is a main problem in Turkish history education, from primary schools to universities (Demircioğlu, 2014;Demircioğlu, 2015). Although there have been important developments in history education in terms of using active teaching approaches, traditional teaching approaches are still used in the majority of schools in Turkey. The data collected indicate that the great majority of social studies teacher candidates thought that teaching methods in history lessons were teacher-centered.
The comments of teacher candidates are as follows: The teaching approaches in history lessons were similar to the teaching approaches used in The data show that teacher candidates found history lessons teacher-centered, and they were not active in their history lessons.
Assignments given in history lessons were seen useless: Assignments are important tools in the teacher education process in the developed world, and teacher candidates should be required to prepare different assignments throughout the teacher education process (Demircioğlu, 2002). Teacher candidates who joined this research declared that their assignments were based on library and internet research and that they didn't find assignments useful, as the following quotes indicate: In our history lessons we were rarely given the opportunity to present assignments based on mainly internet and library research. The assignments which we were required to prepare were not useful for us. We made a survey using the library and internet and by examining resources. We did not make a deep examination, used copy and paste in assignments. (A female SSTC 5) As can be seen by the above explanations, teacher candidates believed that assignments given in history lessons did not provide adequate benefits.
History lessons about Turkish history were seen as important: Social studies teacher candidates gave importance to the history lessons about Turkish history because these lessons give information about Turkish culture and support national identity.

Results and Discussion:
The results based on the open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interview indicate that history lessons taught in the social studies department did not make a sufficient contribution to social studies teacher candidates' development. First of all, the great majority of social studies teacher candidates thought that the history lessons taught to them did not provide enough benefits to them -inconsistent with interview results -because of inadequate amount of time and the teacher-centered approaches. They thought that the main role of these lessons were merely to transmit information, which was a reflection of the memorization tradition in the history lessons of social studies departments. Besides this, more than half of the teacher candidates thought that the education which they were given provides them with adequate ability to teach history topics on the social studies curriculum effectively in social studies lessons when they become teachers, which is inconsistent with the results of the interview.
Furthermore, it is understood that teacher candidates were not active in history lessons, and that lecturing was the main teaching approach of history lessons, which is compatible with the interview results. Although teachers are expected to carry out active teaching approaches in primary and secondary schools in Turkey, teacher-centered teaching approaches remain widespread at university level; this is in line with the results of Kuzğun and İncili (2016), who propose that new teaching methods and approaches should be included in the history lessons in social studies teacher education departments. In addition to this, it seems that teacher candidates were not required to prepare a variety of assignments in their history lessons, and that preparing presentations was the main assignment, which seen useless in the eyes of teacher candidates; this is in line with the results of the interview. Finally, both the interview and questionnaire results indicate that history lessons about Turkish history, especially Seljuk, Ottoman and the Turkish Republic, were seen as the most important lessons. Teacher candidates thought that these lessons are important for transmitting knowledge of Turkish history and culture, which reflects the classic history teaching tradition in Turkey. The roots of this approach go back to the establishment of the Turkish Republic.
The following recommendations can be made based on the results of this research: • The aims and content of history lessons in social studies teacher education departments should be reconstructed to make these lessons beneficial for social studies teacher candidates.
• Student-centered and constructivist teaching approaches should be used in the history lessons in social studies teacher education departments.
• Social studies teacher candidates should be asked to prepare assignments which provide relevant skills to teacher candidates, such as researching, writing and problem solving.