Developing Political Literacy of Social Studies Teacher Candidates for Citizenship Education

Abstract

In a rapidly developing and advancing world, citizens are expected to be involved in politics and help their administrators and politicians. Although the concept of political literacy has an old history, it has become popular today. It has been included as a skill in the 2018 and 2023 social studies curricula in Türkiye. Considering the relevant national literature and the results of the needs analysis conducted within the scope of this research, it is seen that social studies teachers and teacher candidates don’t know political literacy and don’t have political literacy knowledge, skills, and values as necessary. They, who are expected to raise politically literate individuals, have to be politically literate citizens or teachers in order to be successful. This research, produced from a doctoral thesis, was aimed at improving the political literacy of social studies teacher candidates. So, a political literacy education program was prepared within the scope of action research, one of the qualitative research designs, and political literacy education was given to improve the political literacy of teacher candidates. After the training, which lasted about three and a half months, the effectiveness of the program in developing political literacy and the views of teacher candidates on it were tried to be revealed.