The inorganic chemistry is one of the essential courses in the education of pre-service chemistry teachers. This study investigates the differences between the adopted learning approaches and achievements of Turkish pre-service chemistry teachers' who received the inorganic chemistry course from the same lecturer. The purposes of this study are to explore the relationship between the inorganic chemistry achievements and the adopted learning approaches of pre-service chemistry teachers and to examine the effect of their learning approaches on their inorganic chemistry achievements. This study was conducted with 127 pre-service chemistry teachers from the Department of Chemistry Education at one of the public university in Turkey. “The Study Process Questionnaire” and “The Inorganic Chemistry Achievement Exams” were used as the data collection tools. The descriptive statistics and chi-square test were used for the data analysis. The results of the study displayed that (1) there is a significant relationship between the pre-service chemistry teachers’ inorganic chemistry achievement and their learning approach; (2) their learning approach has 34 % effect on their inorganic chemistry achievements according to Somers'd value.

Firstly, the researcher provides an insightful introduction into the phenomenon focused on to explicate the learners’ views about the role of school counselors in line with career selection. To attain the study objectives, the researcher used a multi-unit case study to investigate the perceptions among high-school students about school counselors’ roles and career selection. The investigator used open-ended questionnaires to harness information and then utilized the qualitative descriptive approach to analyze the data. Analysis of the information collected via open-ended questionnaires was done through thematic analysis, which was a subset of the broader qualitative descriptive technique. The findings denoted that high-school learners have varied perceptions with regards to the roles of school counselors and career selection.

The aim of the research is to determine the perceptions of the preservice science teachers about the photosynthesis and to reveal the relation between these perceptions and the misconceptions of the existing concepts. In the research, field scanning method was used as a descriptive research method. The sample of the research is composed of 355 preservice science teachers trained in different universities. For the selection of the sample, purposeful sample selection was used and attention was paid to the fact that the preservice science teachers had taken the General Biology-I and General Biology-II courses at the undergraduate level in the determination of the class level to be included in the study. The "Photosynthesis Concept Achievement Test" (PCAT) developed by the researcher and composed of 4 questions was used as a data collection tool. Quantitative data obtained from the study were analyzed using SPSS.20 package program while content analysis was performed in the analysis of qualitative data. As a result of the research, it was determined that the preservice science teachers' perceptions of photosynthesis were in the direction of chemical and biological approaches and that the teacher candidates preferred the chemical approach rather than the biological approach. However, preservice science teachers who prefer the chemical approach have reached the conclusion that they are in much more misconception than the biologically approaching teacher candidates.

The aim of this study was to determine the causes of social media addiction of individuals, who define themselves as social media addicts, in a clearer and more concrete way. In order to achieve this aim, participants have been tested with an addiction test, and 25 university students who perceive themselves as social media addicts were selected for the study. The findings of the research showed that participants' reasons for using social media were lack of friends, social necessity of social media, feeling of fulfillment, fear of missing out, intertwining of social media and daily life. The study also pointed out that social media addiction has a beginning and a continuity phase. It has been shown that the individuals who were in the beginning phase tended to start using social media for reasons such as not being able to find friends, lack of socialization, and monotony of life. In the continuity stage of individual addiction, they stated that they use social media for reasons such as, fulfilling a duty, and protecting social relations that they had. One of the reasons for addiction was the need to socialize, while male participants were more interested in acquiring new friends, female participants were more interested in communicating with their real life friends.

Gender differences in mathematics learning outcomes are still evident in many countries participating in large scale international testing, as well as in national testing in Israel, the context in which the study reported here was conducted. The participants were 281 students from three Israeli elementary schools and were in grades 4 and 6. The students completed a questionnaire with items based on a selection of variables included in explanatory models for gender differences in mathematics. It was found that many students held gendered beliefs related to mathematics learning, particularly when the questions asked related to themselves or to significant others in their lives (parents and teachers); the views of the majority of students were gender neutral. When presented with two photographs -a man, and a woman- and asked who was the one more likely to work with mathematics, it was clear that the students’ choices and explanations echoed perceptions of mathematics as a male domain.

The purpose of this study is to reveal factors considered by mathematics student teachers while posing modelling problems. The participants were twenty-seven mathematics student teachers and posed their modelling problems within their groups. The data were obtained from the modelling problems posed by the participants, their solutions on these problems and the groups’ reflective diaries regarding their problem posing and solution processes. The data were analyzed by using content analysis and the codes were constructed according to the problems’ contents. The participants' diaries were examined in terms of generated codes and the expressions supporting/relating the codes were determined. While designing the problems, the participants considered the factors such as being interesting, understandable, appropriateness to real life and modelling process, model construction, and usability of different mathematical concepts. Their solutions were generally handled in terms of usage of the mathematical statements, appropriateness to the modelling process and being meaningful for real life. Modelling training should be provided to enable the student teachers to develop modelling problems and their designs should be examined and the feedbacks should be given.

This paper aims to test the reliability and validity of the Turkish adaptation of DeBaryshe and Binder's Parent Reading Belief Inventory (PRBI) and to investigate parents' literacy beliefs. The primary focus of this paper is to explore parents’ beliefs and practices and their relatedness on the emergent literacy of their children aged 3–7 (M=69.8 months; SD= 9.33 months). As data collection tools, we availed ourselves of the Parent Reading Belief Inventory,(PRBI), Home Literacy Inventory (HLI) and Child Literacy Behaviours (CLB). In addition, the Personal Information Form, prepared by the researchers, was utilized. Moreover, confirmatory factor analyses were performed on samples of parents from Adana, a city in southern Turkey (N= 952). The study showed that a seven-factor structure in the original form of the PRBI was validated , excluding items 8, 30 and 31. Consistent with the results of the confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis, it can be concluded that the PRBI is a valid and reliable tool to investigate the process of parents' literacy activities with their children in Turkey.

This is a descriptive study investigating the perception of children about discipline through metaphors developed by them. A total of 445 students participated in the research and the data was collected with the “Discipline Metaphors Survey (DMS)” developed by the researchers. At the end of the study, 143 metaphors, 94 positive and 49 negative, about discipline were gathered. The participating children mostly perceived discipline as a phenomenon guiding their behavior, maintaining the order, and as being necessary for the social life. Learning and development, self-control, protection mechanism, planned and ordered study, as well as collaboration are further positive perceptions of discipline. Negative metaphors, on the other hand, were usually power and control oriented and the discipline committee was described as the ultimate authority entity. Based on the students’ views, discipline was provided through classroom rules and for misbehavior the teachers tended to use warnings, shouting/scolding and punishment. School rules, dress code as well as prohibited product checks at the entrance of the school, the Discipline Committee and discipline rules were reported as the most common practices of discipline in school. Most of the students who thought that punishment is necessary for discipline stated that the punishment should not involve physical violence and that it should be reasonable. Further expectations of the students found in the study included warning without shouting, doing enjoyable activities to address individual differences, informing everybody about the rules. Children’s perception about discipline was usually affected by their teachers followed by their family and the school administration respectively.

Recent science education standards emphasize the importance of the instruction of nature of science (NOS) concepts at all levels of schooling from pre-K to K-12. Delivering a proper NOS education to students is excessively dependent on their teachers with an adequate understanding of NOS concepts. The present study investigated the science conceptions of preschool and elementary teacher candidates. The data collected from a total of 506 prospective teachers were analyzed with respect to the following demographic variables: majors, genders, grade levels, high schools and GPAs of teacher candidates. “Student Understanding of Science and Scientific Inquiry (SUSSI)” developed originally by Liang et al. (2008) was the instrument used to collect data in this study. The data analyses were conducted using MANOVA and Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The corresponding mean scores of the teacher candidates in specific aspects of NOS ranged from “poor” to “informed” conceptions of science. All but one of the demographic variables yielded statistically insignificant results on the NOS conceptions of teacher candidates. The majors of the teacher candidates were detected as a significant variable influencing the conceptions of the teacher candidates. The results of the study were discussed in reference with the relevant literature.

Teacher education programs are often accused of failing to prepare preservice teachers for real life classroom situations. In the case of research on classroom management, the focal point is often classroom teachers and their educational and behavioral goals rather than students’ experiences. This study aims to explore the perspectives of preservice teachers on their attitudes and behaviors in the university classrooms. For this purpose, 40 preservice teachers, who studied in the Early Childhood Education department at a state university in Turkey, were selected. The interview was chosen as the data collection method. The interview questions were based on the questions that Cothran, Kulinna and Garrahy (2003) used in their study with the secondary physical education students. The collected data were analyzed by the constant comparison method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and common themes were constructed through the analytic induction method (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993). In this study, the findings indicated that incompatible behaviors served different functions in teacher education classrooms. The preservice teachers perceived punitive teacher responses to students’ negative behaviors as compelling, ineffective and mostly humiliating practices. The preservice teachers provided three main elements that affect their attitudes, behaviors and experiences in a teacher education classroom. These elements were related to students, teachers, and the context of the classroom. The preservice teachers perceived their positive or negative behaviors mostly as reactions to the behavior of the teacher and the classroom environment.

The present study aims to explore the experiences of prospective physical education teachers on active gaming. The study, which used qualitative case study design enrolled 2 prospective physical education teachers (1 male, 1 female) who were included in extracurricular activities and physical education classes in 2015-2016 academic year. For data collection, semi-structured interview forms, diaries and extended field notes were used. For data analysis, the content analysis method was used: following the transcription process, coding was performed in two categories and themes and sub-themes were created that reflect common codes. The findings have revealed that according to prospective teachers, active gaming ensures active participation of students and facilitates classroom management in physical education classes, which, in turn contributes to the learning environment where every student can participate. It also has been found that active gaming in the extracurricular activities contributes to the arousal of the initial participation desire in students, and establishment of an environment suitable for the improvement of physical competence. According to prospective teachers, active gaming should be used not in every part, but in certain parts of classes or of extracurricular activities.

The research was conducted to determine the opinions of students (10-11 years) on their engagement to mathematics course. These students are 5th grade students at a secondary school in Turkey. Qualitative research method was used in the research. At the study, designed as case study, a total of seven secondary school students were participated the research. The study group was constituted with “snowball sampling” technique of purposeful sampling methods. The data was collected by a semi-structured interview form. Sixteen-page interviews obtained from the interviews were transferred to the computer. Data analysis was performed in content analysis. Codes were listed as a result of analysis. Common themes were constituted from the codes. As a result of the research, three themes, (cognitive, social and emotional engagement) eleven sub-themes and eighty nine codes were determined. It was seen that the students’ most preferred superficial strategies in terms of cognitive engagement; negative opinions towards group work in terms of social engagement; value given to math course in terms of emotional engagement. Students preferred least getting support sub-theme in terms of cognitive engagement; competitive sub-theme in terms of social engagement; value to the mathematics teacher sub-theme in terms of emotional engagement.

Recently, there has been growing interest among practitioners and scientists in teaching children computer programming languages. The international efforts to raise generations who produce technologies are supported at the national level in Turkey too. Programming language education is included beginning from secondary school curricula of computer science education. However, it can be mentioned that up-to-date methodological and pedagogical requirements of the courses are not adequately researched. Therefore, the primary aim of the study is to share innovative methods regarding programming education processes with middle school computer science teachers. This paper presents the details of a project conducted to design an in-service training model for computer science teachers and funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) with the project number of 116B298. During the training period, up-to-date methodology and technologies were presented in workshops with an integrated approach. At the end of the courses, the participants’ development and the efficiency of the activities were investigated based on the analyses of qualitative and quantitative data and positive results about the content of proposed in-service teacher training methodology were yielded.

The main goal of this paper is to briefly describe the educational quality assurance procedures of Jubail Industrial College and share its experience with other local and international institutions that are potentially interested in implementing similar quality assurance procedures in their various departments. This paper follows a document and descriptive method. Document analysis qualitative approach was opted. In essence, implementing quality assurance procedures within any educational institution ensures quality education and helps to maintain an organized structure. Internal quality assurance policies and practices guarantee that the quality of education in an academic institution is consistently monitored. This paper can be utilized by both academic planners and quality assurance personnel in academic institutions. The quality assurance procedures described in this paper are used to ensure the quality of education specific to the Jubail Industrial College; however, it can be applied in other academic institutions as well.

The advent of the new economy brought university reforms to the limelight, and higher education research concentrated on the study of interactions of multi-level, multi-actor policy reforms, to the detriment of studying policy implementation. The ebbing of implementation analysis in the mid-1980s has probably put researchers off following up policies to the point of delivery, resulting in what critics dubbed a 'missing link'. Policymakers more pronounced need to evaluate the impact of the policies they adopt, inter alia, has led to a renewed interest in bottom-up implementation in other public policy fields, but not as much in higher education research. The article builds on a Network Governance-informed approach for studying policy reform in higher education and adapts it to study of policy implementation with a focus on transition systems. Witte's actor-centered new institutional framework is taken as a springboard, and some of its underlying assumptions are reviewed for that purpose, adding insights from public administration literature (NPM) and Lipsky's street-level bureaucracy (SLBy). Ultimately, it proposes a politics-institutions framework to account for the institutional change entailed to the reforms.

A modern teaching method influences both direct and indirect learning achievement through the student's nonacademic factors. The researcher has an intention to examine the influences of new teaching methodology on mathematics achievement towards mathematics attitude, achievement motivation, and self-efficacy of students as mediating variables (n teacher = 117, n student = 2,205). The Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling revealed that attitude towards mathematics is the most important factor in explaining the academic achievement of individual students. It could be explained the variance with achievement motivation and perceived self-efficacy of students by 60.50%. As for the modern teaching method, there was a positive effect on achievement both directly and indirectly through all three factors with statistical significance and explained conjointly about the variance of student achievement in each classroom by 99.00%. This finding suggests the importance and direction of teaching design that covers the development of relevant factors as proposed in discussions and implementations.

Conflicts are an inevitable phenomenon within organizations. The organization of interest in this study is the elementary school and the conflicts that may emerge into its context. There are many types of conflicts and their consequences vary; there are positive consequences, but also negatives ones. When teachers are to express their opinions on conflicts, they think that conflicts happen often enough, and they recognize both their negative and positive effects. The present study examined teachers’ perceptions on the frequency of certain types of school conflicts and their consequences. The researchers asked teachers working in public elementary schools in Achaia Prefecture, Greece. Personal characteristics of the study’s participants such as age, gender, years in service and teaching specialization were also taken into consideration. It was found that a small percentage of teachers believed that conflicts happen very often. In general, teachers thought that negative consequences are more frequent than positive ones, even though, they recognized the beneficial aspect of conflicts. Lastly, the teachers’ groups that were formed based on participants’ characteristics showed significant differences. Study’s limitations along with suggestions for future research are also discussed.

This study has experimentally tested how the introduction of simulations, adapting the experience of higher educational institutions of the United States, including the elements of gamification, in the training course Professional Foreign Language stimulates the educational activity of students at higher educational institutions of Ukraine students’ educational activity  through the involvement and creation of activity for constructive competition and cooperation, stimulation of interests and motives, maintaining cognitive attention of students and encouraging feedback. To carry out this research, a script, a methodology for arranging the simulation Coffee Import-Export Procedure was developed. To process the collected statistical information, Covariance-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) software, including two-way ANOVA for Mixed Measures, was used, and the Textalyzer software was used to process the answers of the experimental group’s students to the open-type questions. It was found out, that the simulation model Coffee Import-Export Procedure with elements of gamification develops value-motivational, cognitive and activity-reflective components of educational activity of students, develops self-education skills, which are included in the list of key life and career Skills of the 21st Century, moving the formation of competences of self-education from minor to dominant positions, forms the model of future professional activity of students. The scientific and practical results of this research can be used in the practice of corporate training of company’s personnel, professional training of future specialists in management, international business, organizational psychology, law, etc., as well as for the organization of professional training for people with limited access to higher professional education or for those who needs retraining.

This descriptive and correlational study investigated the effects of using PSPP in learning Statistics on students’ attitudes and performance. The respondents of the study were 200 Grade 11 Senior High School students who were enrolled in Probability and Statistics subject during the Second Semester of School Year 2018-2019. The respondents were randomly selected from those classes across the different academic strands that used PSPP in their Probability and Statistics subject through stratified random sampling. The results revealed that the students have favorable attitudes towards learning Statistics with the use of the PSPP software.  The students became more interested and engaged in their learning of statistics which resulted to an improved academic performance.

The current study aimed to adopt and assess the psychometric properties and measurement invariance of Grit-S among Omani and American students (N = 487) using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The scale’s construct validity was estimated by investigating its associations with achievement goal orientations (AGOs). EFA results suggested that a two-factor solution (i.e., perseverance of effort [G_PE] and consistency of interest [G_CI]) was the best factorial structure, explaining 47.74% and 51.02% of the variance in the Omani and American samples, respectively. The factors had good reliability coefficients in the two samples. Related to the intercultural differences, G_PE explained more variance among Omanis (31.02%) relative to American sample, whereas G_CI explained a larger proportion of variance among Americans (36.86%) compared with Omani sample. The first level of measurement invariance, configural invariance, was not supported, necessitating the investigation of the other levels of measurement invariance using a new sample. Grit correlated positively with mastery and performance-approach goals (r = .29 and .12, respectively) and negatively with avoidance goals (r = -.25), supporting the scale’s construct validity. These findings showed that Grit-S scale can be used as valid and reliable assessment tool to assess student interest and perseverance in the academic context in Arabic/Omani and American cultures.