An Action Research on Improving Classroom Communication and Interaction in Social Studies Teaching

Abstract

The aim of this research is to reveal how communication and interaction in classrooms can be enhanced with the communicative approach education provided for social studies teachers. The participants of this research were five social studies teachers working at secondary schools and their 7th grade students, N = 110. The data collection tools adopted in this research were video and audio recordings, documents, semistructured interview forms, and stimulated recall interview forms. The data obtained from recordings of lessons were analyzed using the communicative approach, and the data obtained from document review and interview were analyzed using the content analysis method. The results of the study show that social studies curriculum contains items that require both dialogical and authoritative discourses and that the course books are prepared accordingly, but teachers as the practitioners of the program do not conduct their lessons accordingly. Instead, all the teachers participating in the research used only authoritative (interactive/noninteractive) approaches and they did not include dialogical (interactive/noninteractive) approaches at all. This situation, which is seen as a problem in terms of conducting successful in-class communication and interaction, has been solved in three action cycles with one of the teachers. The teacher who used only authoritative (interactive/noninteractive) approaches in her lessons prior to the trainings started to include dialogical (interactive/noninteractive) approaches too. It was also observed that the teacher's impression of the lessons carried out by adopting the communicative approach model was positive. As a result of the research, it was concluded that the communicative approach model is applicable in the social studies course. It can be said that the trainings given to the teachers created awareness about the use of the communicative approach model in classroom communication and interaction and provided benefits in diversifying discourse styles.