Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
PONTE, cilt.79, sa.7, ss.13-25, 2023 (AHCI)
Since the second half of the 20th century, new developments in educational understanding, approaches and philosophies have led to questioning and discussion of the roles of teachers and students in the education process. This new approach has radically influenced history teaching too. In this context, students have not become receptive learners of knowledge but they have been the individuals who have been at the center of the learning-teaching, and they have reached information by using all the sources in the society. In this case, they have begun to be considered as agent individuals who can reconstruct this information by associating it with their background knowledge and past experiences. With regard to history teaching, instead of transferring knowledge about the past to the passive students, the primary goals of teaching have become providing students with the skills related to the nature of history, the processes of producing historical knowledge, the methods and study skills used in this process, and the use of sources and evidence. This approach has enhanced the importance of using objects, which are one of the primary sources of history, in history teaching. Objects have begun to be seen as a part of understanding and making sense of the real world, as an element of embodying the past, as a data source for illuminating the past, and they have been used in education. The aim of this study was to determine the opinions of the social studies teacher candidates about the historical objects and the use of these objects in education. A qualitative case study methodology was used in the study. The data were collected through open-ended opinion and observation forms, and were analyzed using content analysis. The participants of the study were 7 senior teacher candidates studying at a state university in the social studies education department in Turkey. Findings showed that although the teacher candidates had incomplete and somewhat wrong information about the historical objects, their knowledge about the subject was at an acceptable level. Their skills of using historical objects in teaching was also found to be inadequate.