Teachers’ Perceptions About the Usage of Legends in Social Studies Education

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