In this study, it is aimed to determine the cognitive structures of visual arts pre-service teachers receiving art education regarding the museums and museum related concepts of culture, archaeology, ethnography, anthropology and art history, by means of a word association test. The research was designed with the general survey model, which is one of the descriptive research types. The study group of the research consists of 46 pre-service teachers studying in the 3rd and 4th grades of the Art Education Department of a higher education institution. Data were collected using an independent word association test (WAT)̧; Key concepts of “museum”, “culture”, “archaeology”, “ethnography”, “anthropology” and “art history” were presented to the participants by the word association test. At the end of each key concept, a related sentence section is included in order to understand more clearly what the concept means. The data of the research were analysed by descriptive analysis method. As a result of the analysis, a frequency table was created. Concept networks were drawn using the cut-off point technique according to the frequency table. According to the tables, related sentences and concept networks, it is seen that there are misconceptions in the meanings of anthropology and archaeology concepts. The museum key concept is seen to be related to the key concepts of culture, archaeology and ethnography. It was observed that there is no relationship between the key concepts of art history and archaeology, anthropology and archaeology, ethnography and art history.

Museum, museum education, culture, Word association test.