INVESTIGATION OF PRE-SERVICE SCIENCE TEACHERS’ COGNITIVE STRUCTURES TOWARDS THE CONCEPT OF ENGINEERING

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to expose the cognitive structures of the pre-service science teachers' to the concept of "engineering". The research was conducted in the 2015-2016 academic year. The research data were obtained from 34 pre-service teachers who were studying in the department of science teaching of a university. In the research, word association test (WAT) was used as a data collection tool. The concept of "engineering" has been identified as the keyword. The pre-service teachers wrote the words related to the concept of "engineering". The words and frequencies of pre-service teachers were determined, then these words became a concept network. As a result of the research, it was determined that pre-service teachers expressed 113 different words related to the concept of “engineering”. It has been found out that teacher candidates mostly associate engineering and engineering branches. In the research, it was concluded that pre-service teachers associate engineering concepts with science, technology and mathematics disciplines