Enhancing Practices in Social Studies Education: An Examination of Graduate Dissertations Employing Action Research

Abstract

Practice-based research is perceived as significantly important to enhance the quality of social studies education in the literature. In particular, graduate dissertations have great potential for contributing to the literature, and using research methods, and designs that improve practice is valuable in graduate-level research. This study focuses on dissertations that employ action research. This practise-based research design can be used to find solutions to instructional problems and improve the quality of social studies instruction. The study's primary aim is to examine the graduate dissertations with action research design completed in the field of social studies education in Turkey in terms of various variables. Document analysis, a qualitative research method, was used, and 82 graduate dissertations adopting action research in social studies education were examined. Descriptive analysis was performed in data analysis. The results showed that only few graduate dissertations were completed by using action research in social studies education, these dissertations were mostly at the master's level, qualitative research methods were employed in most of the dissertations, teaching-learning approaches, methods, and techniques were mostly addressed in the data collections processes, and most of the dissertations did not involve an action or lesson plan.