Analysing 8th grade students? knowledge of concepts of ?democrasy? and ?republic? used in social sciences lesson

This research has been done in order to analyse 8th grade students? knowledge of concepts of democracy and republic used in Social Sciences lesson in 2008-2009 educational year. The research contains 5 chapters under the titles of introduction, theoratical explanations and related explanations, method, findings and comments and results and suggestion.The research conducted a frame of general survey model as a survet model. The research?s working group consisted of 218 8th class students selected from four primary schools from Diyarbakır AND Şanlıurfa Siverek district.As, the data collection tool?Conceptual Success Test?of 16 items ,example tests in which the names of the countries are given (ETNOCAG1 and ETNOCAG2) and an explanatory example test in which the names of the countries are not given (EETNCANG), developed by the researcher used in the study. In assessing the data about the ?Conceptual Success Test?; frequency distribution and percentage distribution analyses were analysed. In example test in which the names of the countries are given (ETNOCAG1 and ETNOCAG2) and in explanatory example test in which the names of the countries are not given(EETNCANG) common students? answers were categorized; the numbers of students? repeated expressions and the percentage of them in total answers were calculated. The findings gathered at the end of the study can be summarized as such:According to the conceptual success test of 16 items, the ratio of students? answering the right answers about the terms of democracy and republic was 53 and below. Analysing the answers of students to the ( ETNOCAG1 and ETNOCAG2and EETNCANG) it was found out that students could not discern between political regime and form of goverment from each other and it was also found out that they rarely used concept of monarchy, leading concept of republic ,and that they rarely use concepts signifying other political regimes such as theocracy,dictatorship and communism.It was determined that the students could not exactly define the concepts in the scope of the research and that they did not know about features of the concepts, leading concepts and specific concepts.In the research, it was seen that only few students could categorize the concepts as the examples or not the examples for the republic and democracy and it was seen that only few students were aware of the features of those concepts.Keywords: Concept of Republic, Concept of Democrasy, teaching concepts.