The cognitive structures of the primary school teachers' towards basic biology terms

In order to reveal how the relationships between the concepts in the students' memory are established, the free word association test and mind maps, one of the visual memory techniques, are used. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the cognitive structures of primary school teacher candidates towards biology and basic biological concepts by using these two techniques. The study group of the research consists of 50 (11 boys, 39 girls) pre-service primary school teachers who passed General Biology course in the second year of the Primary Education Program of the Faculty of Education of Abant İzzet Baysal University in Bolu 2018-2019 Academic Year. In this research, qualitative research method is used. Also as a data collection tool; The word association test and mind maps were used. "Biology" is given as a key concept for mind maps and the "living things, classification of living things, DNA, nucleus, genetics, microscope, cell, tissue, organ, system" are also given for word association test. As a result of the data obtained from the word association test, the frequency table showing the number of times the words and concepts are repeated and the concept network that clearly shows the relationships between these concepts were created with "Bubll.us" program. In the establishment of this network, the answer given the most was taken as a cut-off point to a certain number of words and four separate cut-off points were formed (46-37, 36-27, 26-17, 16-9) and the data were analyzed according to these points. As a result of the analysis of the mind maps, the images illustrated by the primary school teachers were gathered under five basic themes: "Subjects of Biology, Technology and Medicine, Sub-branches of Biology, Health and Life and Other". In order to verify whether the concepts gathered under these themes represented the conceptual categories in question, the codes of the two researchers and their respective categories were compared. The reliability of the data analysis performed in this way; [Consensus / (Consensus + Disagreement) x 100] was calculated using the formula and the average reliability coefficient between coders was calculated as 94%. According to the findings obtained from the word association test, it was determined that the different answer words given by pre-service primary school teachers were given to organ, living things and microscope keywords at most. In addition, in the third cut-off point where all the key concepts emerged, it was seen that the conceptual network in the pre-service teachers was separated from each other in the form of three different islets "Tissue - Cell- Nucleus- Microscope","Living things - Classification of Living Things - System" and "Organ – Genetics - DNA" . It has been found that the conceptual network, which is expected to be formed in connection with each other, is formed only when a further cut-off point is taken and that the desired interconnections and reticulated structure are formed in some pre-service teachers, even in a very lower number. In the mind maps, the majority of the images depicted by the pre-service primary teachers were related to the "Subjects of Biology", while the lower number of images were associated with "Health and Life". In the light of the findings obtained from both techniques, it was seen that the cognitive structures of pre-service primary school teachers towards basic concepts in biology are based on the concepts that the frequently emphasized in schools and courses, and they include the concepts used in their daily lives to a lesser extent. In addition, it was observed that the primary school teachers were both having fun and learning and expressing themselves more easily while using free word association test and mind maps.