Investigating the High School Students’ Cognitive Structures about the Light Concept through Word Association Test

Year 2018, Issue: 13, 121 - 132, 25.01.2018

Özgür Özcan , Erdem Tavukçuoğlu

Abstract

Cognitive structure is a structure exhibiting the mutual
associations of concepts recorded in the long-term memory. Students set up
cognitive bridges between their previous knowledge and new knowledge during the
creation of the cognitive structure. Learning a concept does not mean learning
what a concept is called or learning only its definition, but it also means
being able to set up the associations between the concept and the whole. This
study determines high school students’ cognitive structures about the concept
of light by using a two-stage word association test. Content analysis was used in
analysing the data collected. Content analysis is a very effective method
yielding accurate results in reaching the concepts, correlations and logical
patterns which can describe the data. The data obtained were analysed by using
the technique of semantic relations in order to be able to set up logical ties
between the number of words and words. 136 high school students (88 female and
48 male) were included in the research. The words having semantic proximity
were divided into five categories by analysing the data through word
association test. Consequently, the most used categories were as in the
following, respectively: Structure of Light (223), Propagation of Light (143)
and Properties of Light (142). The findings obtained in this study indicate
that high school teachers and university instructors should take special care
with some points in the teaching of subjects related with light. Besides, the
formation of scientific knowledge about the concepts in individuals’ minds will
also encourage the emergence of complex organised knowledge about the
phenomena. 

Keywords

cognitive structure, high school students, light, word association test

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