In today's globalised world, many issues have become controversial. These controversial issues affect society and the individuals who form them. It is inevitable that these topics are brought into social studies classrooms, because this learning area is profoundly related to society. Social studies teachers' behaviours, attitudes, and professional knowledge are crucial in teaching controversial issues. The goal of this study was to investigate social studies teachers' opinions and practices regarding teaching controversial issues in Turkey. The study utilised a mixed method in which both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used. The quantitative data for this study were collected from 646 social studies teachers in different cities in Turkey. The qualitative data were collected through observation of eight social studies teachers who were working in schools situated in areas at four different socioeconomic levels in the Kirsehir province. The content analysis method was used to analyse the qualitative data. The results indicated that there are differences between the teachers' opinions and their practices in teaching controversial issues. The study also found that teachers are faced with academic, professional, and emotional challenges in teaching controversial issues.

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The purpose of the research was to determine the opinions of middle school students about the inclusion of controversial issues in social studies course. In this mixed methods study, an explanatory design was used, and the participants involved middle school students studying in Kırşehir, Osmaniye, and Diyarbakır provinces of Turkey during the 2020-2021 academic year. The quantitative data were collected using the "Student Questionnaire for Controversial Issues" while the qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS 25 and the qualitative data were analyzed through MAXQDA 20. In the analysis of quantitative data, descriptive statistics (percentage, frequency, mean, standard deviation) and t-test and one-way analysis of variance/ANOVA were used since the data had normal distribution. Tukey test was administered to determine between which groups the difference existed. In the qualitative phase, audiorecorded interviews were converted into Word files, then analyzed and divided into meaningful codes. Four themes emerged by combining the codes in common categories. As a result of the research, it was found that the controversial topics that the students wanted to be included in the social studies course the most were human rights and violence. Whilst the subject of terrorism was determined as the subject that the students did not want to be included in the lesson in the quantitative dimension, it was determined that there were different opinions among the students regarding including the subject of terrorism in the qualitative dimension. It was also found that participants' opinions about the inclusion of controversial issues differed in terms of gender, grade level, the city they live in, and reading habits. The reason why all of the students wanted controversial topics to be included in the course was to learn about controversial issues and to raise their awareness of these issues.

The purpose of this study was to reveal middle school students’ digital literacy levels and their opinions about digital literacy. Convergent parallel design, one of the mixed-method designs, was used in the study. Quantitative part involved survey while qualitative part included case-study model. Digital literacy scale and semi-structured interview form were used to collect the data. The participants in the quantitative part involved 367 students studying at a state middle school in Kırşehir while 12 students took part in the qualitative part. The data analysis was conducted separately, and general conclusions were drawn and combined during interpretation. Although students had high scores from the digital literacy scale, the in-depth qualitative analyses showed that they did not have adequate information about the concept of digital literacy. Moreover, the quantitative results showed that students, who used digital technologies for research purposes, had higher scores from the security dimension of digital literacy scale than the students who used digital technologies for studying. However, the qualitative results revealed that students used digital technologies most commonly for entertainment. It was found that students’ digital literacy was significantly differed by their gender, grade level, book-reading duration, and internet-use duration while it did not significantly differ by their purpose of using digital technologies. Additionally, based on the qualitative results, students agreed that social studies course contributed to their digital literacy.