A Study on the Development of Mental Models: Space Concept

Abstract. Models are scientific and mental activities which are designed to facilitate understanding of complex events, situations, phenomena and systems by students. In addition to be a simplified representation of an idea, an object, an event, a process, a system or a term; models are scholastics tools that provide convenience to conceptualize objects, events, ideas or systems and to understand abstract terms that is hard to be understood. In this study, it is aimed to determine the mental models of the primary school students for the concept of space and to investigate the change according to the class level. In the study in which latitudinal study model was used, a total of 113 participants from various levels of a primary school were asked a question about the concept of space and students were asked to make explanatory writings and drawings about these concepts. As a result of qualitative analysis of the obtained data, 4 themes emerged which are earth-like space model; the celestial space model; the cavity space model and the realistic space model. The findings of the research show that students at different levels have different mental models with regard to different meanings about the concept of space. It is seen that while concrete concepts construct the mental models of the pre-school and the second-year students, students in higher levels have included abstract concepts in their mental models