Examining Cognitive Structures of Prospective Preschool Teachers Concerning the Subject “Force and Motion”

The purpose of this study is to identify the cognitive structures of prospective preschool teachers concerning the concepts included in the subject “force and motion”. The study was conducted on a total of 56 prospective teachers who studied Preschool Teaching at Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University. The Word Association Test (WAT) was employed to reveal their cognitive structures. In addition, each participant was asked to build up a sentence with each keyword, which, in turn, enabled their misconceptions and conceptual change processes to be disclosed. The WAT included 10 keywords related to the subject “force and motion”. Arranged to evaluate the results of the WAT, the frequency table presented the number of times each answer was repeated. A conceptual network was formed on the basis of the frequency table. The network was created through the technique “cut-off point” in order to reveal the conceptual changes in a decisive manner.