An Evaluation of the Theses on Social Studies Education in Turkey

The aim of the study is to show how the theses prepared in the field of social studies education in Turkey have been distributed according to different criteria from 1990 to the present. Examining the prepared theses in the field of social studies in terms of various aspects, this research is thought to be beneficial in view the overall framework of the theses prepared on this subject. Descriptive method was used in this study. In this context, during the document analysis process, five major steps were followed as (1) access to documents, (2) checking originality, (3) understanding the documents, (4) analyzing the data, and (5) using the data. The research statement has been determined as “How the theses on the social studies education field in Turkey show distribution according to differentcriteria like the dates, the universities, and the research topics.” Accordingly, in the theses prepared on the field of social studies , the sub-problems have been designed according to a) the dates, b) the universities, c) their status of being open to the reader in National Theses Database d) the research topics and how these topics are distributed according to the years.In the studies made, it has been observed that the first thesis prepared in the field of social studies was in 1990, and it has been found out that the number of the theses in the field has reached to 550 master theses and 62 doctoral dissertations to date. In the process of 20-year research, the number of theses increased rapidly by 2006, and both master and doctoral dissertations were mostly prepared in 2007. In the examination made according to the universities, both master theses and doctoral dissertations were mostprepared at the Gazi University. When the total number of theses is examined, the number of master theses was observed to be approximately 9 times more than doctoral dissertation. In a study made according to theses’ status of being open to the reader or not, the majority of doctoral dissertations and master theses are seen to be open to the reader, a great many of them are found to belong to 2006 and after. When the distribution of theses’ topics is examined, it is found that, in the master theses and doctoral dissertationsrespectively curriculum and instructional methods were studied mostly