The effect of word games in removing misconceptions of primary school 4th grade students in social studies course

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of word games on eliminating conceptual misconceptions in Social Studies among 4th grade primary school students. A quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test control groups, one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The study group consisted of 48 students actively studying in the 4th grade of a public school affiliated with the Ministry of National Education in Tuşba district, Van province, during the 2024–2025 academic year. As a data collection tool, the "Vocabulary Knowledge Scale" developed by Wesche and Paribakht (1996) and adapted into Turkish by İlter (2015) was used. The data were analyzed using statistical methods through the SPSS program. If parametric conditions were met, an Independent Samples T-Test was used to determine whether there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups, and a Paired Samples T-Test was used to assess the differences between pre-test and post-test scores within each group. Additionally, the eta-squared (η²) correlation coefficient was used to determine the effect size of the differences in post-test results. The findings showed no statistically significant difference between the groups in the pre-test, whereas a significant difference in favor of the experimental group was observed in the post-test. As a result, it was concluded that word games are effective in addressing students' conceptual misconceptions in the context of Social Studies.