The Effect of A Social Studies Course Supported by Stories on Critical and Empathetic Thinking Skills

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of a social studies course supported by stories on the critical and empathetic thinking skills of 4th grade students. The study was conducted according to the intervention design, a method used in mixed method research. The 10-week study was carried out in two public schools in Gaziantep in the 2018-2019 academic year. The Critical Thinking Achievement Test developed by Eğmir and Ocak (2016) and the Empathy Scale for Children developed by Bryant and adapted to Turkish by Yılmaz-Yüksel (2004) were used to collect quantitative data. Semi-structured interview forms, semi-structured observation forms and a research diary were used to collect qualitative data The qualitative data was analyzed by content analysis and descriptive analysis. Quantitative data were analyzed by Shapiro-Wilks test, T-test for unrelated measurements, T-test for related measurements, and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. In addition, the effect size of the experimental intervention was calculated using eta squared (n 2) for parametric tests and Pearson's Correlation Coefficient (r) for non-parametric tests. The significance level was taken as .05 for statistical analysis. The results of the study show that using stories in the social studies course made a significant difference to the development of students' critical and empathetic thinking skills in the experimental group and that the experimental intervention has a high effect size. In addition, the students' opinions suggest that cognitive and affective features, language skills and content such as empathy, interpretation, deduction, fast and meaningful reading, analyzing, knowledge acquisition, inferring, effective responding and listening can be developed by enriching the social studies courses with stories.