PRE-SERVICE CLASSROOM TEACHERS’ LEVELS OF UNDERSTANDING CERTAIN CONCEPTS USED IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY

Abstract

The current research aims to investigate pre-service classroom teachers’ levels of understanding certain concepts used in teaching physical geography subject. The study group consists of totally 250 pre-service teachers who attended the 3rd and 4th years at Department of Classroom Teaching, Faculty of Education, Gaziosmanpasa University in 2010-2011. The study was conducted through a semi-structured concept scale with 8 questions, developed by the researcher. Pre-service teachers’ responses to the concepts included in the scale were content-analyzed in categories of “understanding”, “limited understanding”, “not understanding”, “unable to respond”, and “misunderstanding” (misconception). The analyses showed that pre-service classroom teachers stated the concepts included in physical geography subject on the levels of “limited understanding” and “not understanding”. The most frequent misconception that the pre-service teachers had was on physical geography concepts of “Heat”, “Plateau” and “Temperature”.