Social Studies Teachers' In-service Training Needs towards Project Tasks: A Comparative Case Study

Abstract

This study aims to determine in-service training needs of novice and professionally experienced social studies teachers regarding the planning, implementation and assessment processes of project tasks. The study was carried out using comparative case study from qualitative research patterns as base. Eight social studies teachers who were determined by means of extreme and deviant case sampling constitute the participants of the study. Interview method was used in data collection and collected data were analyzed with inductive content analysis approach. As a result of analysis, it was determined that social studies teachers need an in-service training that includes basic features of project based learning approach and context-based practices. In addition, it was found that teachers need to improve their knowledge and skills especially concerning 'taking student and curriculum characteristics into consideration in project processes', 'adaptation of project processes into different education environments' and 'development and usage of objective assessment tools'.

Primary and secondary school teachers’ perceptions of their social science training needs

“…The in-service training of social science teachers is also a research line with a long history due to the fact that the updating of content knowledge, providing teachers with the necessary training for a good development of their teaching practice, is fundamental in the teaching profession (Barnes et al, 2017;Gonzaĺez and Skultety, 2018;Konig et al, 2017;Yeşilpınar and Karakus, 2017). In-service teacher training has become even more important lately, if that is even possible, due to the appearance in recent decades of the competences in the educational sphere and advancements in the field of historiography and the teaching of the social sciences.…”