TURKISH STUDENT BIOLOGY TEACHERS' CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURES AND SEMANTIC ATTITUDES TOWARDS MICROBES

The aim of the current study is to investigate student biology teachers' cognitive structures related to "microbe". The mixed research design was applied in this study. The data were collected from 44 student biology teachers. The free word-association test, the drawing-writing technique and the semantic differential attitude scale were used as data collection instruments. The data were subject to content analysis and divided into categories through coding. With the help of these categories, the cognitive structures of student biology teacher were explained. These categories were determined as definition of microbes, microbial variety and activity, immunity. It was determined that student biology teachers' semantic attitudes towards microbe were at a neutral level in terms of mean scores of all adjectives considered; however based on each and every adjective, they mostly perceive microbes as infectious, contagious, and dirty. Moreover, the data collected through two data collection instruments indicated that student teachers had misconceptions about microbes considering the themes determined.