Multiculturalism in Social Studies Teaching: A Meta-Synthesis Study

Abstract

Purpose: This paper aims to evaluate the findings of studies investigating multiculturalism in social studies teaching in Turkey. Studies examining the concept of multiculturalism, which belongs to an important place in the social studies course, were analyzed, and the findings related to what was focused most, what was needed and the subjects that had never been investigated before were presented.Design/Methodology/Approach: The meta-synthesis method, which is one of the qualitative methods based on interpreting and synthesizing the findings of the studies, carried out with a qualitative and mixed method investigating multiculturalism in the field of social studies teaching. In the meta-synthesis method, researches on the same subject are interpreted from a critical point of view by creating themes or main templates. Within the scope of the "inclusion criteria" determined, 11 studies examining multiculturalism in social studies teaching were analysed. Findings:The findings showed that in order to describe the current situation, the great majority of the studies examined the documents, and the data collection and data analysis methods were similar due to the document analysis method. Studies examining multiculturalism in different units of the curriculum of social studies course show that the situations of addressing multiculturalism in the program have varied over the years, and that there have been significant developments over time in terms of the representation of multiculturalism in the context of learning domain. Studies conducted on social studies textbooks show that the reflection of multiculturalism on books took place later than the curriculum. As a result, it is seen that the level of multiculturalism is still not sufficient. Conclusion:Instead of conducting descriptive studies that determine the extent to which multiculturalism is represented in social studies documents, social studies researchers are suggested to carry out studies using different methods that create products for the creation of multicultural education environments that can be carried out with a social studies curriculum.