COGNITIVE STRUCTURES OF SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER CANDIDATES REGARDING FINANCIAL LITERACY (ECONOMIC LITERACY): WAT STUDY

Abstract

The study aims to examine the cognitive structures of social studies teacher candidates regarding financial literacy (economic literacy). The study group, who participated in the study on a voluntary basis, consists of 248 participants from the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th-grade students who studied in the Social Studies Education Department at Niğde Ömer Halisdemir University in the 2021-2022 academic year fall semester. The research was conducted using the phenomenology design, which is one of the qualitative research methods. The Word Association Test (WAT) was used as the data collection tool. "Financial Literacy Skill" in the 2018 Social Studies Curriculum of the Ministry of National Education was used as the basic concept in the preparation of the WAT. The data obtained from the WAT was analyzed through the content analysis technique. In this context, frequency tables related to the number of repetitions of the words given for the key concept were created, breakpoints suitable for these tables were determined and a concept network was created to see the cognitive structure and conceptual connections. The CMapTool program, which was created by the Florida Institute of Human and Machine Cognition and is available for free, was used in the creation of the concept network. It was concluded that social studies teacher candidates associated 5 words with the key concept (Money, Economy, Bank, Foreign Exchange, Trade).