Abstract:

The main aim of this research is to reveal the cognitive structures of preservice teachers’ about the term of the curriculums by word association test. For this purpose, it has been tried to determine the cognitive structures related to the term of curriculum, objective, content, educational situation and evaluation situation of preservice teachers’. This research has been carried out within phenomenology from qualitative research designs. The sample of the research consists of 87 third and fourth year students who are studying at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University Faculty of Education. Word association test was used as data collection tool in the study. For the analysis of the data, the answer words given to the key concepts in the word association test have been examined in detail. A detailed frequency table has been prepared which shows how many key words or phrases are repeated. A concept network was created by utilizing this frequency table. The breakpoint technique is used in the concept network creation process. According to findings, it can be said that the cognitive structures of preservice teachers’ for the curriculum are not enough and the cognitive structures for the students of the curriculum are moderate at the end of the research. It can be said that the cognitive structures of preservice teachers’ are inadequate especially for the concept of educational situations which is the subject of the curriculum. It has been found that there are misconceptions about how conceptual networks and concepts are formed in the research and what kind of misconceptions are made. Based on the results of this research, it can be said that "Word Association Test", which is used in researches in the field of science in general, is also an effective technique in cognition of misconceptions and cognition in different branches.

Keywords: