MENTAL DESIGNS ON THE MIDDLE EAST CONCEPT

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Turkey is located in a geographical position, at the intersection of the three continents (Asia, Europe and Africa). Therefore, it is defined by the metaphor of “bridge” in almost all relevant social science and geography books. By means of this metaphor, It is claimed that, on a narrow scale, Turkey interconnects the Middle East, the Balkans and the Caucasus, whereas on a large scale, interconnects Asia, Europe and Africa. This situation is of great importance in terms of historicity and geographical features of Turkey-Middle East relations. Therefore, the Middle East region is included in secondary and higher education curricula as important thematic areas of geography in terms of both natural and human contexts and it is aimed that students acquire in-depth knowledge about the Middle East [geography]. In this study, it is questioned how the preservice geography teachers conceive the concept of the Middle East and by which countries they define it. The sample group of the study, which was conducted as a mixed research design, consisted of ninety (90) preservice teachers who graduated from Geography Department at Çankırı Karatekin University. The data were collected by using a structured interview form that included open-ended questions. The obtained data were analysed by content analysis technique, collected under thematic dimensions, and evaluated according to gender and geographical region variables. In the second stage, chi-square independence test was used to test the correlation between the thematic dimensions and these two variables and the level of statistical significance was accepted as P 0.05. In this research, the analysis of meaning and mental designs that geography teacher candidates have assigned to the concept of Middle East was made by exploratory sequential mixed method and in this context, the functionality of secondary and higher education geography programs were discussed.

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Geography , Human Geography , The Middle East , The Concept of the Middle East , Mental Design , Content Analysis

International Journal of Geography and Geography Education

58

International Journal of Geography and Geography Education