Determining students' cognitive structure regarding Ataturk's principles through the word association test (WAT)

The aim of this research is to reveal the cognitive structure and misconceptions of 9th grade students about Atatürk's principles through the Word Association Test (WAT). The research is important in terms of revealing the knowledge and perception of the 9th grade students from the previous education level, primary education, in their minds about Atatürk's principles. The sample of this study, in which the Scanning Model was used, consists of 299 high school students studying in 4 different school types in a medium-sized city center. In the research, the Word Association Test (WAT), which includes Atatürk's Principles (republicanism, nationalism, populism, statism, secularism and revolutionism) was used as a data collection tool. With the data obtained with the applied WAT, a frequency table with key concepts and answer words was created. Concept networks were drawn according to the data in this frequency table. In the findings, it was seen that the participant students used 815 different answer words, and the number of repetitions of the answer words such as Atatürk, people, equality, state, innovation, justice, freedom, democracy in the frequency table was relatively high. In the study, the answer words "Atatürk and Freedom" formed a strong framework. All key concepts have emerged in the concept network of KN 70 and above. Between KN 10-39, "Recep Tayyip Erdogan" and "War" for "Republicanism"; "Turkism" and "Racism" for "Nationalism"; "President" and "Recep Tayyip Erdoğan" for "Statism"; "Ottoman State", "Language" and "Caliph" for the principle of "secularism"; For Revolutionism, "History" and "Lesson" were associated with the answer words and it was determined that there was a misconception in these principles. In the research, although the necessity of teaching Atatürk's principles to individuals is seen as a state policy, it has been observed that students who have completed basic education have misconceptions.