The Efficiency of Visual Reading in Terms of Understanding “Change and Continuity” in Social Studies Courses: An Action Research

Purpose: The aim of this study is to launch a teaching process which focuses upon visual materials and reading in terms of understanding those concepts mentioned above during learning and teaching processes in Social Studies lessons and determine its efficiency. Design & Methodology: The present study is a qualitative research. Action research design has been employed in this study. 22 students, 12 female and 10 male, studying on 5th grade of a state school in 2015-2016 academic year in Seyhan, Adana, Turkey have been selected as the study group. In the study, ‘visual reading activities and worksheets about the concepts of change and continuity’, ‘focus group discussions with the students’ and ‘video records’ have been used as data collection instruments. Content analysis, one of qualitative data analysis methods, has been employed with the purpose of evaluating the data gathered from data collection instruments. In the present study, four attainment targets for a specific unit (Ger？ekle？en Dü？ler) in 5th grades “Science, Technology and Society” learning domain have been determined. Aimed at those attainment targets, visual reading-based activities and worksheets at the end of each activity have been employed as data collection instruments in order to reveal students’ visual literacy skills. Findings: Most of the students, being able to state opinion as to the concepts of change and continuity, participate actively in visual reading activities. Please give spectacular findings obtained from your study. They are observed to have arguments through the visuals in the activities about those concepts mentioned above, express their opinions and put forth an output such as painting, catchword etc. Implications & Suggestions: According to the results of the research students experienced difficulty in perceiving continuity as compared to perceiving change. The students state that they feel happy during visual learning-based teaching process, understand the lessons better and faster. They also add that visual literacy facilitates their understanding, they are able to attend lessons more and better at stating opinion from visuals