Understanding Our History: Local and Oral History in Social Studies Courses

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to elicit the views of prospective classroom teachers (PCT) about their work on local history and oral history after the education given in the social studies course and to determine the quality of their related work. The study group consisted of 63 PTCs attending the third grade at the Department of Classroom Education of a public university in Istanbul, Turkey. In this study, which has the characteristics of action research, document analysis as a qualitative research patterns and an open-ended survey were used as data collection tools. In the study, the PCTs received education on the use of local history and oral history in social studies courses. Then, they were asked to present their work on local history and oral history in a classroom setting. The results obtained show that the education they had been given was effective in the PCTs’ learning of how to use these methods in the social studies course. The PCTs successfully utilized local history and oral history in the social studies course and were able to present their related work. In addition, when the results related to the views of the PCTs were examined, it was determined that they had positive thoughts and gains, which is consistent with the literature.

Keywords

• sosyal bilgiler
• yerel tarih
• sözlü tarih
• değişim ve süreklilik
• social studies
• local history
• oral history
• change and continuity