Examination of Conceptual Development Process of Students in "Getting to Know Our Region" Unit of Social Studies Lesson

Abstract

The aim of the study is to examine the conceptual development process of the concepts in the unit of "let's learn our region" of the 5th grade students through the word association test which is an alternative measurement tool. The study was conducted with 46 students who were educated in the 5th grade of a middle school in catalpinar district of Ordu. A word association test (WAT) was used as a data gathering tool in the study. In the pre-test and post-test sections of the study, the word association test including the concepts in the unit was applied. Within the scope of the Social Studies curriculum, students are given sixteen concepts in "let's learn our region" unit. The preliminary test results of the students have spread to a wide range of irrelevant topics; It is observed that they have difficulty in constructing the sentences through which the concepts pass, or they have made statements other than their real meaning about the concepts. Because of the misconceptions of the students, it was seen that they had difficulty in answering different types of questions. It was tried them to realize conceptual awareness by pre-test. As a result of this study it is thought that WAT can be used as an alternative measurement tool in educational environments as a measurement-evaluation tool in which the mentioned aims can be used.