Learning misconception of students in learning in middle school 8th grade citizenship and democracy education courses

Purpose of this study is; to identify misconceptions about concepts in Citizenship and Democracy Course of 8th grade students.This research is a qualitative study. In the research, the design of subject science (phenomenology) was used. In this sense, in the academic year of 2011-2012, by using easily accessible sampling method, the principals and the teachers of seven elementary schools from four educational districts within boundaries of central Malatya were contacted with, then four volunteer elementary school were selected. The questionnaires were carried out with 70 students from the one 8th grade class from each of these chosen elementary schools. In this research, the data were collected via semi-structured interview form developed by the researcher. To collect data, the questionnaire which involved open-ended questions was implemented. The obtained data fromthe interviews were checked and analyzed after confirming necessary arrangements. In this study which is designed in accordance with qualitative research approach, "content analysis" was carried out. The collected datathroughthe semi-structured survey sheet technique are digitized and expressed as frequency. When the submissions of the students who participated in the research on concepts in Citizenship and Democracy Course are generally assessed it can be said that the students correctly defined the terms of equality, freedom, right, republic and cooperation although they were mostly failed to define the terms of civil society, pluralism, citizenship, justice and democracy. It was seen that the students mostly commit mistake since they confuse a term with a related one or they use these terms interchangeably. None of the students managed to define the term of pluralism. The misconception on pluralism shows that the students can not distinguish the difference between spoken language and scientific language. By considering these results, some proposals were made to reduce the misconceptions of the students who take Citizenship and Democracy Course. These proposals are; teachers should stress the relationship between the terms of justice, equality, right, democracy and freedom, and explain the distinguishing quality of them. Lastly, teachers should state the difference between spoken language and scientific language. Keywords: Concept, concept misconceptions, concept teaching, Citizenship and Democracy Course,