The attitudes of social studies teacher candidates towards social justice

This study aims to determine the social justice attitudes of social studies teacher candidates and to examine these attitudes in terms of various variables. It employed a parallel mixed design to examine whether the findings overlap with each other. The study group consists of 188 teacher candidates studying at the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year of the social studies teaching undergraduate program in a state university in Turkey. Qualitative data were obtained from eight teacher candidates determined according to the maximum diversity sampling from the study group. Quantitative data were collected through social justice scale and a semistructured interview form. The quantitative data of the study were analysed by independent sample t-test and one-way ANOVA, and qualitative data were analyzed by inductive analysis method. Findings revealed first that social justice attitudes of social studies teacher candidates were generally at a good level. Second, teacher candidates expressed social justice with concepts such as justice, equality, distribution of resources and regulation of social relations. Third, the social justice attitudes of teacher candidates did not differ depending on the gender and their grade. Fourth, while the educational status of the father was not effective on the social justice attitudes of the teacher candidates, the educational status of the mother was effective. Fifth, the level of social justice attitudes of teacher candidates who are members of non-governmental organizations and who work effectively is higher than the level of social justice attitudes of other teacher candidates. Finally, teacher candidates who use social media frequently have higher social justice attitudes compared to teacher candidates who rarely or never use social media.