Determination of social studies teacher candidates' misconceptions about the history concepts of 7th grade social studies lesson

The concepts that are one of the most important elements of communication can sometimes be used by individuals outside their scientific meaning and contain misconceptions. These misconceptions are frequently encountered both in daily life and in education. In this study, misconceptions of social studies 4th grade teacher candidates were measured by using 19 concepts of history discipline in social studies 7th grade textbook. In this study, survey model which is one of the quantitative research designs was used. The universe of the study is the 4th grade social studies teacher candidates studying at three public universities in the Aegean Region. The data was collected from 108 students who attended classes in the spring semester of 2018-2019 academic year in these universities. The three-stage diagnostic test developed by the researcher (Tarih Kavramları Yanılgı Testi) was used for data collection. For each of the 19 concepts, there was a categorical classification of 'no misconceptions', 'misconceptions' and 'lack of knowledge'. And The combination of students' answers to the three-stage questions was arranged in MS Excel and SPSS. Thus, students' misconceptions were identified and compared between universities. As the result of the research, it was found out to what extent the prospective teachers have the concepts they will teach in their professional lives in scientific sense. According to this, the most misconceptions of students were Kil tablet, Ahilik, Pisagor. Concepts with the highest rate in the 'no misconceptions' category were Lonca, Matbaa, Pusula, Rönesans. However, the concepts that students have the most lack of knowledge were Vakıf, Kubbealtı and İbn Sina. Additionally, misconceptions among universities were compared. Based on these results, suggestions were made to the researchers for future studies.