DETERMINATION of HISTORY and SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER CANDIDATES’ COGNITIVE STRUCTURES on ATATURK PRINCIPLES VIA WORD ASSOCIATION TEST

The aim of this study is to determine the pre-service history and social studies teachers' cognitive structure about principles of Ataturk through the word association test (WAT). In this research, general survey model was used; the study group consisted of a total of 80 students, 40 of whom were the fourth-grade social studies pre-service teachers and 40 fourth-grade history students taking pedagogical formation education in Gaziosmanpa？a University Faculty of Education in the 2015-2016 academic year. The word association test (WAT) was used as data collection tool in the study. WAT was formed by using 6 key concepts forming Atatürk Principles. In the analysis of the data, the frequency tables of answer concepts given to key concepts were formed and examined in detail. The conceptual network map was drawn according to the obtained frequency table results. According to the results of conceptual relational network, the pre-service history teachers established accurate and meaningful relations with Atatürk principles. However, pre-service history teachers could not associate Atatük principles with each other and could not establish multiple relationship between principles, and this showed that Atatürk's principles were largely unrelated and disconnected from each oher in their cognitive structures while pre-service social studies teacher established accurate and meaningful relations with Atatürk principles. Moreover, the results revealed that pre-service social studies teachers strongly associated Atatük principles with each other, so it was achieved that pre-service social studies teachers strongly associated the Atatürk's principles with each other in their cognitive structures