I. Title of Action Research: An Action Research on Improving Classroom Communication and Interaction in Social Studies Teaching
II. Author/s : Mutlu Aksoy and Tuncay Geylan
III. Abstract:
The aim of this research is to reveal how communication and interaction in classrooms can be enhanced with the communicative approach education provided for social studies teachers. The participants of this research were five social studies teachers working at secondary schools and their seventh-grade students, N=110. The data collection tools adopted in this research were video and audio recordings, documents, semistructured interview forms, and stimulated recall interview forms. The data obtained from recordings of lessons were analyzed using the communicative approach, and the data obtained from document reviews and interviews were analyzed using the content analysis method. The results of the study show that the social studies curriculum contains items that require both dialogical and authoritative discourses and that the course books are prepared accordingly, but teachers as the practitioners of the program do not conduct their lessons accordingly. Instead, all the teachers, participating in the research used only authoritative (interactive/non-interactive) approaches and they did not include dialogical approaches at all. This situation, which is seen as a problem in terms of conducting successful in-class communication and interaction, has been solved in three action cycles with one of the teachers. The teacher who used only authoritative approaches in her lessons prior to the training started to include dialogical approaches too. It was also observed that the teacher's impression of the lessons carried out by adopting the communicative approach model was positive. As a result of the research, it was concluded that the communicative approach model is applicable to the social studies course. It can be said that the training given to the teachers created awareness about the use of the communicative approach model in classroom communication and interaction and provided benefits in diversifying discourse styles.
REFLECTION
Identifying problematic situations and solutions to these problems helps you to become a better teacher because you will become more observant, and wiser, and it even enhances your critical thinking as you cannot just think of a solution right away. You have to consider a lot of things especially if that solution will match the problem or not. Moreover, you will also become more understanding because of the students' different problems.