PRESERVICE TEACHERS’ PERCEPTION OF CONCEPTS USED IN SOCIAL STUDIES EDUCATION

Preservice teachers experience education- training process through different levels and departments. In the process, thanks to education and training, they take, they witness many concepts related with the field. In this paper, preservice teachers', from different departments, perception of some concepts used in social studies teaching was tried to reveal. Study group of the research includes 5 preservice teachers of Turkish, 5 preservice teachers of Social Studies Teaching, and 5 preservice teachers of Primary School teachers students of 4th grade in 2014-2015 Education year at Uşak University. In the research, phenomenological research design which is one of the designs of qualitative research method was used. Taking experts' opinions, concepts were determined by researchers. Data of the research were collected by interviewing. Descriptive analysis method was used in analysing the data. As a result, it was observed that there existed differences among the departments in perceptions of concepts. It is pointed out that preservice teachers have difficulty in identifying concepts, and they perceive the identified ones with the first meanings given in dictionary.