English abstract
This study aims to investigate the perceptions of the social studies teachers and their supervisors about employing current events in teaching social studies in the Sultanate of Oman as well as examining the effect of different variables including gender, job, specialization, years of experience, training courses, and educational governorates.
In order to achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher used the descriptive approach by two study tools (A questionnaire and an interview). The questionnaire consisted of (75) statements distributed over (7) areas: the importance of linking current events with social studies, the sources used by the teacher in employing current events , the skills required to integrate current events, the appropriate topics for current events, the criteria for selecting current events, how to deal with current events in the classroom and the difficulties of using current events in teaching. The interview included the same dimensions of the questionnaire, but the statements were converted into open-ended questions and applied to a sample of (448) teachers and (48) supervisors. The interview was applied to (10) teachers and (5) supervisors of social studies in cycle two of basic education and post basic education in the governorates of Muscat, Al Batinah North, and Al Dahira.
The results revealed that the perceptions of the teachers and supervisors of the current events were great, and their assessment of the difficulties facing their use was good. The effect of the gender variable in the teachers is only for the benefit of females in all topics except the "sources of current events". There were also statistically significant differences at the level of significance (a = 0.05) to the job variable between teachers and supervisors in all study topics except the of "how to deal with the current events in the classroom?", As well as an absence of significant differences to specialization variables and years of experience in all study topics.
There were no statistically significant differences in the variable levels of training courses in all topics except the "how to deal with the current events in the classroom" for e teachers, and the "skills required for the teacher to integrate the current events" of the supervisors and there were absence of differences to the variable levels of educational governorates in the teachers in all but three topics, the "skills required for the teacher to integrate current events", "appropriate topics for current events" and "The difficulties of using current events in teaching, while the results showed that there is no effect of the educational governorates variable on the supervisors perceptions.
