Determining the cognitive structures of social studies teacher candidates with the word association test regarding the concepts in the learning domain of people, places and environments

In today's developing and changing society, re-examinations and developments are made in the field of education at the same rate as the changes in economic, political and technological fields. To ensure equality of opportunity in education in line with every purpose planned and implemented in the field of education, and to expand the boundaries of education in accordance with technological and scientific developments. Programs developed in this direction are of great importance in terms of raising effective citizens who are beneficial to the society. In the Social Studies Curriculum, emphasizing the importance of experience as well as knowledge in the development of the individual, the constructivist approach that supports the right decision-making skills, the development of problem-solving skills and active participation has come to the fore. In this direction, alternative measurement tools have been developed that will be useful for making concept teaching meaningful and permanent and preventing misconceptions. In this study, it was aimed to determine the cognitive structures of pre-service teachers regarding the concepts such as census, demography, sketch, brain drain, exchange of population, urbanization, urbanizing, refugee, weather condition and weather event in the field of Human, Place and Environment learning in the Social Studies textbook by word association test, which is one of the alternative measurement tools. This study is a descriptive research in survey model. It consists of Fırat University Faculty of Education Social Studies teacher candidates in the 2020-2021 academic year. As a result of the study, the participants generally made associations with words such as science, migration, level of development, economy, unemployment, age distribution, employment, population growth and asylum-seeker. In this study, it was determined that social studies teacher candidates cognitively structure the given key concepts.