Developing Political Literacy of Social Studies Teacher Candidates for Citizenship Education

Abstract

In the rapidly developing and advancing world, citizens are expected to be involved in politics and help to their administrators/politicians. Although the concept of political literacy has an old history, it has become popular today. It has been included as a skill in 2018 and 2023 social studies curriculums 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, expected to raise politically literate individuals, have to be politically literate citizens/teachers in order to be successful. In this research, produced from a doctoral thesis, it was aimed to improve 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, lasting 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.   Keywords: Citizenship education, Political literacy, Social studies, Teacher candidates