A Gender-Based Examination of the Case Study Method in Primary School Social Studies Courses

The aim of this research is to determine how the answers given by the 4th-grade students in a public school in Istanbul to the questions of the case study texts in the Social Studies course differ based on gender. In this direction, the case study design, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the research. Data were collected by open-ended survey. The answers given by the students to the intellectual, empathetic, and moral questions, to the case studies prepared based on the visuals, newspaper, and dialogue. In the study, the answers of 86 female students and 84 male students were examined. According to the examination of students' answers, female students answered empathic and moral questions more often than male students; male students were found to answer intellectual questions more often. In the intellectual and moral questions, it was determined that the answer type of male students was higher than that of female students. In addition, it was determined that the most frequently given answer and the given second answers were generally different between the two genders. The study of the students' answers indicated that female students answered more questions than male students in newspaper-based and visual-based case studies; however, in dialogue-based texts, male students answered more questions than female students. In the newspaper-based and visual-based case studies, the response type of female students was higher than that of male students; If it is a dialogue-based text, it has been determined that the answer type of male students is higher than that of female students. In addition, it has been determined that the number of questions that the most frequently given answer is the same between the two genders is more than the number of questions that are different. In this context, it is thought that the study will shed light on other gender-based studies. Keywords: social studies, case study, gender, primary school.