The aim of this study is to reveal the cognitive structures of primary school students by determining their perceptions about the concept of "Piano" through the Word Association Test (WAT), which is an alternative assessment and evaluation technique. For this purpose, in the study which is designed by using qualitative research method, the data were obtained with the participation of a total of 29 elementary school students who received amateur piano education.
Independent word association test was used to collect data. The data were evaluated according to content analysis, frequency and percentage values were given and categorized.
According to the findings of the research, six categories (musical knowledge, affectiveness, physical structure of the piano, practice, show, anxiety) were determined as a result of the answers given by primary school students to the key concept of "Piano" and a total of 117 answer words were obtained. It was observed that the students associate the key concept of "Piano" with the word "note" mostly. In the "structure of the piano" category obtained from the answer words, the most common answer that the students associate with was the word "keys". This shows that students have the right cognitive perception level regarding the "piano" key concept. Additionally, in the data collected with the measurement tool in the specified categories, it was observed that elementary school students had alternative concepts for the key concept.
Key words: Piano, word association test, cognitive structure, music education