Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the definitional state of social studies teacher candidates regarding the concept of controversial issues and to determine whether a course on it would be beneficial to correct any misunderstandings. The study has been conducted in university in Southwestern Turkey. The study is designed as an experimental research. Participants of the study were 40 social studies teacher candidates, 20 of them were in the experimental group while the remaining 20 served as a control group. The teacher candidates were given a five-point Likert scale to rate controversy levels of some selected issues both prior and after the treatment. The findings show that without a training, social studies teacher candidates were unable to distinguish controversial issues from uncontroversial ones. According to posttest results, teacher candidates in the experimental group demonstrated statistically significant differences from the control group at 42 out of 66 items. The results indicate that teacher candidates in need of some education to better identify controversial issues and results of any research which disregard the lack of knowledge of teacher candidates regarding controversial issues must be handled carefully.   

Key words: Social studies, controversial issues, teacher candidates.