A Study of how Elementary School Teachers are Exposed to the Integrated Approach in Social Studies Textbooks

The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating how primary school teachers encounter the integrated approach in the social studies textbooks. This research was done with a descriptive phenomenological approach. The participants in this research were 15 teachers of elementary education in Faminin city in the academic year of 1999-1400, who were sampled by snowball method. The data collection tool was a semi-structured interview with general questions were approved by three curriculum studies experts and a pilot study. The data of this research were analyzed by coding and categorization in three levels of awareness, attitude and behavior. In order to evaluate the validity of the research findings, the method of member checking was used by two of the research participants. The results showed that the teachers have a good knowledge of the integrated approach and consider its philosophy to be the interdisciplinary nature of social studies science and the creation of coherent knowledge for students. Also, they have a positive attitude towards this approach and consider it effective due to providing multidimensional knowledge, emphasis on concepts, lasting learning, students' interest and reducing the number of course titles. Of course, some teachers resist it due to the disappearance of the boundaries of science, difficulty in evaluation, ambiguity of the teacher in teaching and getting used to the traditional way. In the implementation of the integrated approach, teachers use some components of active teaching in describing their method, which indicates that despite the appropriate awareness and positive attitude, there are still many uncertainties regarding implementation of the integrated approach for teachers.