From Editor

Abstract

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

While it is with our great pleasure to welcome and greet you with a new issue of JSSER, we have been deeply saddened by the earthquake news from Van and terrorist attacks in Çukurca over the past few weeks. Since our organization Association for Social Studies Education Research (ASSE) and journal (JSSER) focus on social issues such as citizenship, poverty, social and economic equality and justice, we see extreme poverty as an important issue in the developing world. Sadly, scenes like those in Van remind us of the impoverishment and dramatic inequalities that remain in the developed countries. We as Social Studies educators need to take more action and responsibility to educate and advocate people in our community and in the world to make poverty history.

This disaster proofed that we as a nation could get united to overcome the difficulties of such disasters with the help of our common values and beliefs. This disaster also showed that whenever and wherever we face up with such tragedies, we could get together and help each other without considering our regional and ethnical differences. However, we also witness through media that a small group of people pays effort to weaken our bonds of brotherhood by using our regional and ethnical differences. Therefore, this gives us a huge responsibility to educate our citizens as social studies educators.