Acquiring levels of conservation concept of 5-6 year old children attending preschool educational institutions

The aim of this study is to determine the conservation levels of 5-6 year old children in preschool educational institutions. In this study, number, length, volume (liquid), and area conservations were investigated. The population study group of the research consisted of 5-6 year old students studying in kindergartens affiliated to MoNE in Ankara province. The research was carried out with 61 preschoolers from 6 schools.In this study, the descriptive method was employed because it is tried to be revealed that level of acquiring the concept of conservation of preschool children attending preschool educational institutions. During the data collection process of the study, students were provided with the problem situations related to number, length, volume (liquid), and area conservation. Student's answers were recorded on the assessment form developed by the researcher. Collected data has been analysed with descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation), Mann-Whitney U in paired group comparison, Kruskall-Wallis in comparison of more than two groups via SPSS.As a result of the findings obtained from the data analyzed, it was concluded that 5-6 year old children could not acquire conservation types. However, on average, more successful results were obtained in number and area conservation than other types of conservation.In addition, in this study, it was determined that the level of acquisition of the concept of conservation of 5-6 year old preschool educational institutions did not show a significant difference according to the children's age, gender and parent's educational levels.