The effect of teaching the historical concepts in the course of 8th grade Turkish republic revolution and Kemalism on historical thinking skills was examined in this study

Concepts are cognitive designs which students employ so as to interpret their social circles and their physical environments. Humans utilize the power of concepts while explaining the meaning of the world. Concept learning includes two kinds of processes which are linguistic and intellectual. Learning abstract concepts requires special effort. In addition to that, scientific concepts are not the ones individuals could learn in daily life. Cultural, linguistic changes in society and changes in lifestyle result in that some concepts disappear in human life. Owing to its subject, history involves past. Therefore, they take a place in history as historical concepts even if concepts come out of people's lives. Furthermore, the aims of History courses are now constructed in the frame historical thinking skills. Improving historical thinking skills require to benefit from the language and the concepts in the past. For this reason, the effect of teaching the historical concepts in the course of 8th grade Turkish Republic Revolution and Kemalism on historical thinking skills was examined in this study. The participants of the study are 20 students in the 8th grade. The research questions are as follows: 1. What is the level of knowledge of students on the historical concepts in the course of Turkish Republic Revolution and Kemalism? 2. What is the effect of the concept teaching techniques applied in this study (concept network, concept puzzle, concept cartoon, creating story, poetry writing timeline, time traveling) on historical concept learning? 3. What is the relationship between teaching historical concepts and improving historical thinking skills? 4. What are the students' views on the concept teaching method after its practice? The design of this qualitative study is action research. The data were collected through the activities carried out with students and the worksheets handed in the study. The collected data were analyzed through descriptive analysis and content analysis. A close relationship was determined between teaching historical concepts and improving historical thinking skills.