Secondary 6th grade students understanding level of geographical concepts and their misconceptions

The purpose of this study is to explore students' understanding levels and misconceptions the Earth's features, geographic location, and their misconceptions regarding these concepts. The sub-concepts of these were the Earth's axis, pole-point, Arctic and Antarctic circles, tropics, equator, prime meridian, parallel, meridian, latitude, longitude, geographical location, case location, mathematic location and local time. The concepts for the study were chosen from the Social Science National Curriculum. In this study, quantitative and qualitative research methodologies were used together. A questionnaire was developed after a pilot study with an aim to ascertain the students' understanding levels of the selected geographic concepts. The questions in the questionnaire were in the forms of short-answer, open-ended, and the questions sought for explanations in the figures and the students' drawings. The questionnaire was applied to 150 students who were selected on the random basis. The students were at the 6th grade, and their age group was between 11-12. The sample was chosen from 5 secondary schools in the city of Trabzon, and its administrative district, Akçabaat. In addition to the questionnaire, a semi-structured interview with 10 students was utilised to explore their understandings about the chosen concepts in detail. The study revealed that the students did not posses enough scientific understandings about the chosen concepts, and had many misconceptions. The study demonstrated that the students confused these concepts due to the fact that they did not understand the concepts and their features. At the end of the study, several suggestions were made to teachers and curriculum developers concerning how to teach these concepts in the National Curriculum. Key words : Social science teaching, Geographical Concepts, Understanding level, Misconceptions. VIII