• Journal title: Journal of Innovative Research in Teacher Education
• ISSN: 2757-6116 (online)
• Publisher: Turkey
• Country of publisher: turkey
• Platform/Host/Aggregator: Turkey
• Date added to EuroPub: 2021/Jan/03

• LCC Subject Category: Education, Teacher Education, Education & Educational Research, Educational Psychology, Education Research
• Publisher's keywords: Social studies, Virtual tour, Virtual reality, Social studies teachers
• Language of fulltext: turkish, english
• Full-text formats available: PDF
• Time From Submission to Publication: 12

Reyhan Altınbay, Nevzat Gümüş

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This study aims to determine the social studies teachers’ views towards virtual tour applications and their effective use in social studies course. Qualitative research was preferred as the research method and the case study approach was used. The study group consists of 25 teachers (16 males and 9 females) working in Bursa. The study data was collected through a semi-structured interview form and then thematic analysis was performed. The results obtained revealed that social studies teachers’ beliefs about the use of virtual tours are that these applications are interesting, embody the subject, provide a sense of reality, and motivating. Teachers also stated that the virtual tour is a useful tool since it is economic and provides permanent learning. Based on the teachers’ beliefs about the use of virtual tours, the following recommendations are offered as a result of this study: First, in-service training on virtual tour should be provided to teachers by Turkish Ministry of National Education (MoNE) and second, contents related to the virtual tour should be prepared by MoNE considering the outcomes of the curriculum. Additional recommendations made by the interviewed social studies teachers are as follows: establishing an information technologies class in the schools and making this class available to different branches such as the social studies, and finally, strengthening the internet infrastructure of schools to support virtual tour applications.