Perceptions of primary education candidates on some concepts containing close meaning in disaster topics

Learning and teaching concepts are used in all disciplines where conceptual evaluations are made. One of these sciences is Geography. Teaching of similar concepts is as hard as teaching. Class teachers, who started to give education to the individual at a young age, should have a good infrastructure as they will be more effective in teaching concept. The purpose of this study is to detect the perceptions of students that are studying at the Departments of Primary School Education in the Faculty of Education on the concepts about disasters that possess close meanings In the present study, survey model, which is a widely used descriptive model, was used. The participants of the study consist of the senior class students who are studying at Primary School Education Departments of Karadeniz Technical University (Trabzon University), Artvin Coruh University and Giresun University. The study was conducted with 157 students in total, 114 of whom are female and 43 are male. The questionnaire includes Yes or No questions, marking questions and open ended questions. An integrated rubric, which was developed by the researcher, was used in order to grade the open-ended answers of the students about some concepts on disasters. Developing the rubric that was used in the study, a four scale grading system as Insufficient (1), Need to be Improved (2), Good (3) and Very Good (4) was used. SPSS 25.0 program was used in order to analyze the data and percentages were given in the analyses. One Way Anova Test was used for statistical significance. The significance level was determined as p<0, 05 in all the analyses. According to the results of the study, it was confirmed that the knowledge of prospective teachers about the concepts in the study that have similar meanings is diverse; however, in general, their level is low and they have made many mistakes about distinguishing these concepts. As a result, it was concluded in the study that prospective teachers are experiencing some contradictions about the similar concepts on disasters. It is obvious that the concepts on disasters that are important both for themselves and the students they will bring up should be extensively covered in the courses as Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Geography. There are some more suggestions given in the study in the lights of the obtained results.