The Importance Of Concept Education

Educational improvements recently demonstrated that students should be taught concepts rather than subjects (Posner, Strike, Hewson & Gertzog, 1982). Concept learning necessitates knowing the prerequisite knowledge of the learners and developing new strategies with respect to different perceptions of those learners (Akdeniz, Bektaş & Yiğit, 2000). Similarly, Ausubel (1968) stated that existing conceptual knowledge in a target area can make the most significant impact on the conceptual learning of students.
Concepts are building blocks of knowledge, so the relationship between concepts constructs scientific principles (Altun, 2004). In other words, concepts are the structures of knowledge that represent the characteristics of different objects or facts (Eggen & Kauchak, 1997). Furthermore, they can be the names of groups of events, thoughts or humans as well (Kaptan, 1999). These concepts not only help us think (Senemoğlu, 2013) but they also direct our knowledge, beliefs and actions in every part of life (Elliot, …show more content…
However, they may all perceive different things from the same instruction, since every student has different attributes, experiences and perspectives (Sigel, 1984). Therefore, there might be a lot of reasons for having misconceptions by students. The skills, comprehending ability, developmental level, prior knowledge and readiness of students are some of the important factors on misconceptions (Bingölbali & Özmantar, 2014). Furthermore, wrong applications in education, textbooks, materials, instructional methods and characteristics of words and language also effect the producing misconceptions (Çalık, 2006; Karslı & Ayas, 2013). However, Bayazıt (2008) claims that the main reason for misconceptions is the difficulties met during the instructional process. When students get deficient and wrong knowledge, they construct their own concepts that are different from the scientific