Comments of Preservice Social Studies Teachers on Media Literacy
Asst. Prof. Dr. Hatice Memisoglu, Gökhan Sarica

Introduction
Social sciences is a field of study that gains the students information, skill, attitude and values of social life based on the information elected from social sciences disciplines in elementary schools. The main mission of teaching social studies is to transmit the cultural inheritance and values of their society tothe students, ensuring them to be good citizens and individuals, developing the process of their defining, analyzing and deciding the personal and social problems.Media literacy is the ability to reach, analyze evaluate and transmit the media messages in different forms. The ability of picking symbols from visual or audio materials like newspaper, television, journal, advertisement or computer that constitutes the media is quite important. Reaching the medium that constitutes the media messages, ability to analyze the media messages is pretty important in modern days in which the information technology improves rapidly.This research, which has been carried out with the aim of specifying the comments of the Preservice Social Studies Teachers on Media Literacy, is a qualitative research. Content analysis was used in this study that was conducted with the equalitative research method. Case study has been used as the research pattern and interviewing has been used as the technique of collecting data. The research has been carried out by interviewing 25 students who study Social Studies Teaching in Abant Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Education during the 2013-2014 academic years. According to the results of the research; the Preservice Social Studies teachers perceive the concept of media literacy as “understanding the media correctly, using it effectively and providing a consciousness about media messages”. On the significance of the course they commented that “it needs to be taught to raise generations who are conscious producers and consumers about media”; on its relationship with the social studies they commented that“media literacy is important as changes and improvements in society take place in the field of social studies”. It has been stated that, the media literacy course needs to be taught by the Social Studies teachers and topics related to “the effective usage of the media tools and the medium” need to have priority. About the media literacy, while mentioning problems like there are no private classrooms, practice activities do not take long enough and the courses are not obligatory, recommendations have been made on the need to teach the course being based on practice.

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