Primary School Teacher Candidates’ Cognitive Structures in Relation to Curriculum, Instruction, Instruction Planning and Evaluating Instruction

Abstract

The main purpose of this research is to reveal the cognitive structures of class teacher candidates in terms of curriculum, instruction, instruction planning and evaluating instruction. In accordance with the said purpose, mapping of the cognitive structures of primary school teacher candidates in regard to the terms mentioned above and assessment of the level of knowledge about these terms have been studied. 109 primary teacher candidates who attend a foundation university in Gaziantep in the academic year 2017-2018 constitute the sample of our research which has been created with the survey model. The data have been gathered via word association test. The gathered data have been analyzed and the proper results have been produced with the interslice distance technique and the descriptive analysis method. In this research, it was found that even though the candidates produced a lot of words about curriculum, instruction, instruction planning and evaluating instruction terms, they appeared limited when it comes to linking these four terms to each other by only using words such as goal/achievement, student, teacher and duration/time. It was noteworthy that the candidates put the term curriculum in the center. On the other hand it was also observed that the candidates coded the term evaluating instruction more independently in their minds than the other terms These obvservations reveal the inadequacy of the structures in candidates’ minds in regard to the aforementioned terms which are related to each other. It was determined that the candidates’ level of misconception, from highest to lowest, could be sorted in the following order: curriculum, instruction planning, instruction and evaluating instruction. It was also detected that the candidates made a lot of unscientific conceptulatizations about the term curriculum while making the least amount of unscientific conceptualizations about the term evaluating instruction.

Keywords

• Bilişsel yapı, eğitim programı ve öğretimi, kelime ilişkilendirme testi.