Increasing Awareness On Dede Korkut and His Stories: An Action Research

Abstract

The aim of this study is to increase the awareness of Dede Korkut and his stories about the fourth grade students in primary school. For this purpose, the following questions have been sought: “What is the awareness of the fourth grade students attending the research about Dede Korkut?”, “How is theme-centered teaching contributing to the knowledge and recognition of Dede Korkut and his stories in primary school fourth grade students?”, “What do students think about the processing of Dede Korkut and his stories with thematic teaching?”, “What are the observations of the researcher during the application?” This study is a qualitative research and is designed with action research. The study group consisted of 22 students in the fourth class of a primary school. In this study, three different data collection tools were used:“Dede Korkut Awareness Form”, “semi-structured interview form” and  “researcher's diaries”. Based on results, it is concluded that students do not know Dede Korkut and her stories which contain cultural values related to the society to which they belong, but successful results can be obtained when these works belonging to our culture are transferred to the students with appropriate methods. At the end of the interview, the students mentioned that they participated in activities related to thematic teaching and Dede Korkut and learning their stories, felt as if they had lived in that period and that they learned through these activities was permanent. In this direction, we can conclude that the theme-centered teaching method is successful in teaching Dede Korkut and his stories.