In this study, it was aimed to determine the remarks of teacher candidates on the place and importance of out of school learning environments in Social Studies education. Phenomenological method, which is one of the qualitative research designs, was used in this study. The work group of the study consists of 73 teacher candidates who conduct out of school activities (43 of them are Social Studies teacher candidates and 31 of them are Classroom teacher candidates). Semi structured interview form was used as data collection tool. Activity phase of the study was conducted in museums, Islamic-Ottoman social complexes, castles and historic mosques in Kastamonu, Sakarya, Kars and Eregli (a district of Zonguldak). Gathered data of the study was examined by using content analysis method, and it was presented with cause and effect relation. When results of the study were evaluated, it was concluded that teacher candidates believe that out of school learning activities embody the knowledge and increase memorability by integrating learning into living. Besides, according to teacher candidates, there are many obstacles ahead of out of school activities particularly economic reasons and reluctance of teachers and the structure/content of Social Studies lesson is very suitable for such activities.

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Legends which are defined as "a story of the lives and extraordinary behaviors of religious elders, or famous and historical people " are quite rich treasures that can be used in social studies education. Legends are used in social studies education due to their characteristics such as shedding light on unknown periods of history, gaining universal/national moral values and behaviors that humanity needs today, and introducing model human types. In this context, the aim of this study is to elicit social studies teachers' usage situation of legends in their courses. This study used phenomenology, one of the methods of qualitative methodology. Participants of the study constituted 20 social studies teachers working in 9 secondary schools in Kastamonu, Istanbul and Manisa provinces in the spring semester of 2017-2018 academic year. In the study, a standardized open-ended interview form was used as data collection tool and the obtained data were subjected to a content analysis. According to the results, most of the participants used legends in their courses, but they also said that legends are not adequately included in social studies curricula and textbooks.

Energy is the vital essence of every biotic and abiotic process. Energy is also in central position in human civilization. The famous energy centrals are the major way for production of energy with many diverse effects on environment. Therefore, the mitigation of these effects is extremely important and one of its way is education in this controversial issue. The aim of this study is to investigate the cognitive structure of these candidate teachers with various branches towards energy centrals or power plants in the road of the solution of the environmental problem. They were asked to fill the word association test containing four major concepts, nuclear, hydroelectric, thermal and wind centrals. In sum, the nuclear central and wind central are found to be the most and the least dangerous ones sequentially in cognitive structure.

In this research, the aim is to determine what the social studies teachers think about the interdisciplinary structure of the social studies course and the educational situation. Likert type questionnaire and semi-structured interview form were used as data collection tools. The questionnaire was applied to 150 teachers working in 58 secondary schools in 27 provinces in Turkey. The form was applied to 10 teachers from the same group. The data was interpreted by descriptive analysis. When the results were evaluated, it was determined that the teachers had some problems arising from the multidisciplinary nature of the course and thought that the interdisciplinary connections between different disciplines could not be done well. There is no consensus among the teachers about the nature of the social studies course, and some teachers especially think that history and geography should be given as separate courses.