Teaching Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Social Studies Courses

Article History: Received 12.05.2014 Received in revised form 17.06.2014 Accepted 04.07.2014 Available online 02.12.2014 The aim of this research is to present teachers the examples related to the intangible cultural heritage for social studies courses and to reveal teachers’ opinions about the intangible cultural heritage in social studies courses. Of the qualitative research methods, the case study method was used in the research. The study group of the research consisted of 18 social studies teachers in the center of Antalya. The criterion sampling, one of the purposeful sampling methods, was used to choose the study group. The data of the research was collected through interview technique and analyzed by using descriptive analysis. When the results of the research were generally evaluated, it was understood that social studies teachers could explain the intangible cultural heritage, and could relate it to the social studies courses and also that they thought that teaching the intangible cultural heritage was important for the elementary and secondary school students. In addition, it was determined that the social studies teachers could find themselves and also the social studies program inefficient to teach the intangible cultural heritage. According to the results of the research, it was also seen that attending the elective course called The Public Culture for the social studies teachers had a positive effect on teaching the intangible cultural heritage topics. © 2014 IOJES. All rights reserved