Classroom Teachers' Perceptions of and Attitudes Towards the Social Studies Course

The purpose of this study is to determine how the attitudes and perceptions of classroom teachers towards social studies lesson affect those of the students towards the same lesson and to develop suggestions about social studies lesson. Social studies classes, which aim to bring up active citizens by helping them attain three of its most important objectives: rights, freedoms and democracy qualities, are first introduced to students in primary schools by primary school teachers. In this kind of lesson, primary school teachers' attitudes towards and perceptions of the lesson play a key role in terms of students who are the basis of posterity. In this regard, this study was carried out to indicate the importance of how primary school teachers' attitudes and perceptions towards social studies lesson affect students' attitudes towards this lesson. The present study aimed to examine primary school teachers' perceptions of and attitudes towards the social studies lesson and students' attitudes towards social studies lesson in terms of various factors and to study how this affects students' attitudes. This study was conducted by collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, and it adopted a multi-staged mixed method design to explore the relationship between various factors and aspects. To collect quantitative data, “social studies attitude scale for students", "social studies attitude scale for teachers" and "social studies self-efficacy scale for teachers" were used. To collect qualitative data, an interview protocol consisting of 18 questions with follow-up questions was used. The sample of the study consisted of 267 5th graders, and the study group consisted of 21 primary school teachers. SPSS 21 was used to calculate descriptive analyses, correlation analyses and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) while analyzing quantitative data. In qualitative data analysis, Nvivo 10.0 was used. The results indicated that primary school teachers ‘attitudes towards social studies lesson, and their competence are above the average. It is concluded that there is a positively significant relationship between primary school teachers ‘attitudes, perceptions and students ‘attitudes towards social studies lesson, students' achievements and the teachers' self-efficacy in the social studies lesson