The aim of the present study is to identify primary school principals' self-monitoring skills. The study adopted the general survey model and its population comprised primary school principals serving in the city of Diyarbakir, Turkey, while 292 of these constituted the sample. Self-Monitoring Scale was used as the data collection instrument. In data analysis, descriptive statistics, t-test, homogeneity of variances, One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Tukey's test were used. The primary school principals' mean self-monitoring score was found to be 9.72. In addition, primary school principals' self-monitoring skills did not significantly vary in terms of gender and length of service. On the other hand, primary school principals who were class teachers had a higher level of self-monitoring skills than subject teachers; Faculty of Education graduates had a higher level of self-monitoring skills than those of other faculties', teachers serving as principals had a higher level of self-monitoring skills than both principals and assistant principals at a significant level.

In this article, the predictive power of five variables relevant for Linguo-intercultural sensitivity (flexibility) is examined. Communication aspect of intercultural interactions, specifically, the role of English as an international language are emphasized. Attitudes Towards English and Its Usage Scale (ATEUS) was applied to 194 students who attended to international colleges and schools in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The results suggest that almost all variables are mutually correlated. The findings also reveal Verbal expressiveness and Verbal abilities as statistically significant predictors of linguo-intercultural sensitivity. Other predictors (English competence and Emotional attitudes) do not significantly contribute to explaining Linguo-intercultural variance.

The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of performance feedback (PF) provided to student teachers working with students with multiple disabilities and visual impairment (MDVI) on their teaching skills. The study group of the research was composed of 11 student teachers attending to the final year of the Teaching Students with Visual Impairments Program at a university in Ankara, Turkey. A quasi-experimental design, was used in the study. These student teachers recorded their classes for pretest and posttest and these video-recorded classes were thereafter watched by the observer, who completed semi-structured observation forms for each student teacher. The results of the analysis suggested a statistically significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores of the student teachers involved in the study before and after the performance feedback. The findings of the study were discussed in the light of the relevant literature and practical recommendations were included.

Several studies have been conducted on technological, pedagogical content knowledge and web-based education. In this study, the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Educational Use of Web Technologies (TPCK-W) were analyzed in addition to the self-efficacy and attitudes of 33 teachers from eight different branches carrying out their duties in 19 countries of the European Union (EU). In this study, the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge-Web (TPCK-W) Survey developed by Lee, Tsai, and Chan was used. The data obtained statistics software was analyzed using SPSS for Windows 17.0 statistics software. As a result of the analysis, it was revealed that TPCK-W self-efficacy of teachers carrying out their duties in EU countries was high and their attitudes were positive; and age, experience, and gender did not affect their TPCK-W self-efficacy and attitudes. Moreover, participants’ general web attitudes changed positively, depending on their web communication, web content, and pedagogical use of the web.

The paper presents an educative experience organized in a postgraduate course in a faculty of education with the aim of facilitating students’ “affective self-understanding”. Affective self-understanding is a reflective practice that allows people to comprehend their own emotions in order to gain awareness of them. Students were spontaneously engaged in a laboratory, where they were invited to reflect on their emotional lives. The educative experience was subdivided into different phases requiring writing and analysis tasks. At the end of the experience, students were asked what they thought they had learned, what had been difficult, and what had been the most important phase for learning. Students’ answers were analyzed on the basis of grounded theory through an inductive process of analysis. The theoretical framework of the research is the cognitive theory of emotions. According to this theory, an emotional education is possible because we can understand emotions by identifying their cognitive component and the actions they induce.

Because of the importance of intellectual disability teenagers fulfilling the daily life skills by themselves, an animation that shows the intellectual disability and autistic high school students an interactive shopping skill by means of iPad was played and its effect on providing them with the independent shopping skill was analyzed. 3 intellectual disability and autistic students attending The Umit Kaplan Vocational Education Center that offers a High School- Level Training in Ankara have participated in the research in 2013-2014 School Year. The ages of the students range between 17-19 years. The dependent variable of the research is the participants’ levels of performing the shopping skills from a supermarket. The independent variable is, however, the animation practices that indicate the interactional shopping skills presented through iPad. The design of the research is the “multiple probe design across subjects” which is one of the single-subject designs.

Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), patterns of parental involvement were examined in selected OECD countries. The findings showed that, irrespective of educational qualifications, parents were frequently involved in their children’s learning at the start of primary school and at age 15. Cross-national analyses showed that a high percentage of parents were frequently involved in various ways with their children’s learning, with some OECD countries showing parental involvement to be very common. Less instrumental, more subtle forms of parental involvement such as parent-child conversations about topical social issues emerged as the strongest predictor for continuing parental literacy support at age 15. These findings have important implications for understanding patterns and forms of parenting and for guiding family policy to consider cultural, economic and educational explanations about the nature of parental involvement in children’s education.

This paper describes a pedagogical framework that teachers can use to support students who are engaged in solving open-ended problems, by explaining how two Japanese expert teachers successfully apply open-ended problems in their mathematics class. The Open-Ended Approach (OPA) framework consists of two main sections: Understanding Mathematical Knowledge and Applying Mathematical Knowledge. The sections were cross-analyzed with students’ responses to provide a comprehensive analysis of how teachers use various techniques to support students. It is proposed that teachers can use this framework to create an environment that promotes learning with open-ended as well as other open problems in their mathematics classroom. The OPA framework can contribute to teacher education, the design of mathematics curricula and to educational research.

Facilitating effective mathematics learning and higher mathematics achievement have long been recognized as a key to the scientific and technological advancement of the African continent. While the central role that language proficiency plays in mathematics teaching and learning has received an overwhelming research attention in the literature over the past two decades, this is not the case among African policy-makers and political leaders. Drawing mainly from our professional experiences as mathematics educators and from the international research literature, our primary intent in this paper is to answer this question: How does the learning of mathematics in English at the basic school level help or hinder students’ mathematical proficiency? To answer this question, the paper is organized as follows. The first part, the introduction, gives a brief overview of the language of learning and teaching in Africa. The second part describes the method and conceptual framework undergirding the research. In the third section, we have analyzed the effects of mathematics learning and teaching through English for basic students whose mother tongue is a Ghanaian language. The conclusion offers four recommendations for developing and improving the mathematics proficiency of students in basic schools.

Effective communication between faculty members and students is one of the concerns of the educational stakeholders at the Northern Border University, Saudi Arabia. This study investigates the relationship between teachers’ effective communication and students’ academic achievement at the Northern Border University. The survey questionnaire containing 26 items was administered on 100 students, 50 males and 50 females to ask about their perception towards the effective communication of the faculty members and their academic achievement at the Faculty of Education and Arts, Northern Border University in the City of Arar, Saudi Arabia. The results of the Descriptive statistics method showed that, almost more than half of the students agreed that, the friendly and understanding position maintained by their faculty members had helped them to highly achieve academically. The results of the independent sample T-test found no statistically significant differences between the students ‘academic achievement and their faculty members’ verbal communication across the respondents’ gender and year of study. The study recommended for the Northern Border Authority as well as the Saudi Government looking into other areas that might bring about the effective communication of the staff and the students’ academic achievement in the University.

In this article, a teaching strategy which not only blends yesterday and today in a meaningful way but also powerfully integrates literacy and history will be examined. Firstly Readers’ Theatre as a technique will be introduced. Secondly, the usage guidelines of Readers’ Theatre will be presented. Finally the opinions of secondary school students about Readers’ Theatre as an instructional component in history teaching will be discussed. The research was conducted on 72 11th grade students from Deneme Secondary School in Çankaya district in Ankara in the spring term of 2013-2014 school years. For the purpose of the study, students were taught by using Readers’ Theatre technique in history lessons for four weeks and at the end of this implementation, the semi-structured interviews were held to determine the opinions of students about Readers’ Theatre technique. The themes were formed by making content analyze to the collected data. It is concluded that the students mainly have described Readers’ Theatre as “theatre”. They have found Readers’ Theatre useful in many respects as they outline the positive effect of the technique on their reading and obtaining historical information. They like most the cooperation with their peers and acting. The vast majority of students have not mentioned any dislikes and a few of them have difficulties to follow the script. Finally, the answers of the majority of the students on the implementation of Readers’ Theatre again are “positive” and their suggestions for better implementation are “on stage”, “the same way” and “using visuals”.

The changes and innovations in information and communication technologies influence the economic and social lives of the societies to a great degree. The countries accordingly take new decisions to benefit effectively from these technologies. The new media system scrolling traditional educational paradigms has also required changes in educational systems. Thanks to the new media-equipped education system in which equality of facility and opportunity parallel to world standards is provided and technologic improvement is individualized, a new generation student profile will emerge who has global competitive skill and individual conscious and awareness. The new generation student profile has to carry the skills of problem solving, using the language eloquently, creativity, critical thinking, life-long learning, media, technology and information literacy, social responsibility and teamwork. Notebooks, projectors and internet infrastructure are aimed to provide for the six hundred thousand classes of all the schools in preschools, primary-elementary and high schools to ensure equality of opportunity, amend the technology in schools and make it possible to use more effective use of CT media in teaching-learning process, which will address more senses. The studies on the issue are still continuing. This study is based on qualitative research methods and techniques in which scanning model is used. The actual case has been presented by doing examinations on FATIH project, Turkish education system, teaching strategies used, e-learning and management information systems and a study is executed on teaching strategies of FATIH project in the light of this information.

Scientific literacy has been increasingly considered a major goal of science education. While textbooks remain the most widespread tools for pursuing this goal within classrooms, they have been slow to adapt to the most recent epistemological paradigms, often still conveying distorted views of science and technology. Accordingly, we present herein a theoretical framework specifically intended to highlight the potential of textbooks to promote students’ scientific literacy. It is additionally argued that, often, the misconceptions conveyed by textbooks represent obstacles to the acquisition of a fair image of science and, therefore, to the acquisition of scientific literacy. Finally, a textbook analysis is suggested.

It is well established that girls and boys perform differently in traditional examinations in most countries. This study looks at a sample of 754 school students in Kuwait (aged about 13) and explores how boys and girls differ in the performance in a range of tests related to learner characteristics. The fundamental question is how boys and girls differ in these learner characteristics and do any of the differences relate to examination performance. If the development of such learner characteristic is open to experiences in the formal learning situations, then this opens the door to possible ways to encourage the development of such characteristics, with possible concomitant enhancement of academic performance. It is found that girls outperform the boys in tests which measure extent of field dependency, extent of divergency and skills with the visual-spatial (all at p < 0.001). Confirming previous studies, the girls markedly outperform the boys in all school subject examinations but there are no differences in their measured working memory capacities. In looking at the relationships between various combinations of the measurements made, it is found that boys are much more dependent on working memory than girls in performing in examinations, and the boys are also much more dependent on employing skills related to divergent thought in achieving success in examinations. These observations are interpreted in terms of the way boys and girls learn, with girls being more conscientious and willing to memorise than the boys who, in turn, have to rely on working things out for success: girls tend to memorise; boys tend to try to work it out. This may offer an explanation of the greater success of girls in typical examinations where the accurate recall of information is so often the key to success.

A university course project was developed and implemented in a biology course, focusing on environmental problems, to assess community awareness of childhood lead poisoning. A set of 385 questionnaires was generated and distributed in an urban community in North Carolina, USA. The study revealed that university education levels among the participants in the study significantly enhanced awareness of the body systems affected by lead poisoning, whereas age significantly enhanced awareness of the treatment of lead poisoning, its prevalence, causes, and the body systems affected. A majority of the participants showed interest in learning about lead poisoning (67%), but perhaps not only through a university seminar (42%). The project showed that involvement of students in innovative communication avenues between universities and communities, aimed at enhancing public awareness of a major environmental health risk, is possible through a biology course project in which students are part of the project’s development, implementation and analysis. Also, such an educational research project can, despite some limitations, offer educational opportunities that can intensify the students’ interest in the course and knowledge of the research topic.

For a university service learning educational research project addressing Legionnaires’ disease (LD), a Yes/No questionnaire on community awareness of LD was developed and distributed in an urban community in North Carolina, USA. The study showed that the age of the participant was a major factor in enhancing awareness of LD, whereas education was a minor factor at best. Differences in responses among the age groups were strongly significant for general LD awareness, knowledge of its causes and prevalence, as well as body systems affected, prevention and treatment. Interest among the participants in learning more about LD (68%) was higher than in attending a university seminar on the topic (54%). This study provided many educational opportunities to the students to enhance and apply their data analysis skills and to intensify several aspects of their knowledge acquisition and communication skills. Fostering the active involvement of students in an educational activity that can set the stage for an innovative university-community partnership on enhancing awareness of the preventable environmental disease LD is of benefit to all stakeholders.

The study investigated the present position of literacy, information and communication technology (ICT} in Prisons by examining the perception of inmates .The study adopted a descriptive survey using structured questionnaire and observation guides on a randomly and purposively drawn sample of 664 inmates out of a population of 47,628 inmates nationally. Frequency counts and percentage were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that in the 21 prisons studied in 12 Nigerian states, the literacy level was low; that inmates were inadequately rehabilitated and that the presence of information and communication technology was lacking. The findings have important implication for literacy development, information and communication technology programmes in Prisons for empowering inmates and reducing recidivism. This paper points to the need to retrace, redirect, restructure and refocus their services and activities on literacy, rehabilitation, information and communication technology so as to empower the inmates.

The purpose of this study is to examine the pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward computers use. The impact of five variables (perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norm, facilitating conditions, and technological complexity) on attitude towards computer was assessed. Data were collected from 230 preservice teachers through self-report and structural equation modelling was used as the technique for analysis. Results showed that 64% of the variance in attitude towards computer use was explained by the five exogenous variables. In addition, perceived usefulness, subjective norm, and technological complexity were found to be significant influences on attitude toward computer use while perceived ease of use and facilitating conditions did not.

The aim of this study is to investigate the moderating effects of attachment styles and gender on the predictive strength of marital adjustment on psychological symptoms among Turkish married individuals. Correlational model was used and the sample consisted of 178 married individuals. The data was gathered through online survey. The Turkish form of Brief Symptom Inventory (BFI) was used to measure psychological symptoms. The Turkish form of Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) was used to measure marital adjustment and the Turkish form of Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ) was used to measure attachment styles. The hypothetical model was formed and tested through path analysis technique of structural equational modeling. Results showed that secure, dismissing and fearful attachment styles and gender moderated the predictive strength of marital adjustment on psychological symptoms. It was found that the relationship between marital adjustment and psychological symptom is stronger among individuals who have secure attachment style.

Instrument design is a powerful research approach to answer questions on a unique research topic.  If the design was crafted to gather demographic information, and included open-ended remarks from respondents, the instrument could gather data that could be used in primary and secondary analyses on the same topic.  Further, the quantitative data could establish independent and dependent variables for statistical tests, while the open-ended questions could garner qualitative data. This researcher created a 35-question instrument on workplace bullying for American higher education and conducted a study on 142 American community colleges. The findings revealed that 64% of respondents endured workplace bullying (Hollis, 2016).  This data set supported several book chapters that included descriptive statistics, chi-square analysis, and qualitative data from the respondents. Further, by using the demographic data, the researcher was able to conduct a variety of analyses regarding workplace bullying and the association in community colleges involving race, gender, and sexual orientation. This practical essay will discuss insight to instrument development including a reflection on the literature review that informed the instrument design.