The purpose of the study is to develop a valid and reliable scale to measure the teachers’ levels of student-centered education practices. The Exploratory Factor Analysis sample included a total of 426 teachers and the Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the scale was conducted on a total of 160 teachers working in the province of Duzce during the spring term of 2014-2015 education year. Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed to test the construct validity of the scale and the model was tested through the Confirmatory Factor Analysis. For the reliability, Cronbach’s Alpha internal coefficient was calculated and item analysis was performed based on the corrected item total correlation. The final form of the scale included 32 items and one dimension. These 32 items explained 40.04% of the total variance. The results of the item total correlation analysis indicated that none of the item was below 0.30 and the lowest item correlation coefficient was 0.51. Cronbach’s Alpha was found to be 0.95 for the internal consistency of the scale. The reliability and validity results for the Student-Centered Education Scale suggest that this scale is a reliable and valid tool to measure the levels of student-centered educational practices among teachers.

Acquiring the reading skills and using this skill effectively throughout life is possible by a qualified education hence qualified teachers. Therefore; teachers and candidate teachers are suggested to be; acquired the reading skills, focused on information and learning, trained well as individuals having knowledge of their fields and pedagogics. By the context; the aim of the study is suggested as examining the reading habits, interests, tendencies of the students studying at the Faculty of Education and analyzing the underlying reason behind their preferences. The descriptive phenomenology method; one of the qualitative research methods is used in the study. The studying group within the research is occurred by the 10 students from 5 different fields of Education Faculty, who read books constantly. The data acquired is collected by semi-structured interview questions and content analysis method is benefited to analyze the data. According to the results of the study; 140 discourses are observed to be expressed within the 6 themes, due to the reading habits, interests and tendencies of the students studying at the Faculty of Education. The mentioned themes herein, are formed as the following: “book type interested”, “content interested”, “topic interested”, “acquiring the reading habits”, “criteria for preferring books”, “the effect of social environment to prefer books”. While the most expressed theme is revealed as “criteria for preferring books”, the least one is about the reading habits, within the research.

Effective school administrators and teachers are those who provide the least restrictive learning environments for all students. The main goal of this study was to analyze the effects of inclusive science education on the general education population of middle school students’ scientific conceptual understandings. The study was designed as a quasi-experimental model and conducted in a middle school in a large urban school district in Midwestern US. Approximately 4% of students in the school were receiving special education services. The participants in the study were selected through non-random selection. The participants of this study included 20 students without disabilities in each classroom with a total number of 120 students from a total of six different middle school classrooms. The study included two classrooms (one inclusive and one non-inclusive) for each grade level (6, 7, and 8). The conceptual change of students without disabilities was measured using the Density Assessment, which included 20 multiple choice questions. SPSS program was used for data analyses. Paired samples t-test and a multivariate group analysis test were conducted to investigate significant differences on students’ conceptual understandings. The findings showed that the effect of inclusive education was significant and positive on the conceptual understanding of students without disabilities in inclusive science classrooms.

The aim of this study was to chronologically examine the contents of the social studies curricula implemented in Turkey in terms of skills teaching in the context of socio-cultural interaction. In the study, the social studies curricula used since 1967 were subjected to content analysis, and the skills aimed to be taught to students in the contents of these curricula were listed. These lists were examined with reference to the socio-cultural conditions of the time they were implemented. Based on the findings, it can be stated that the contents and emphasis of skills cyclically varied across different social studies curricula in Turkey. There was sometimes an individual-centred and libertarian approach adopted in the curricula, while at other times an environment was present in which strict rules were dominant and the system was emphasized rather than the individual as part of the political and social conditions of the time.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of creative drama as a teaching method on academic achievement and retention in social studies, students’ attitude towards social studies of 4th grade. The research is designed according to quasi-experimental model. The research was conducted with 4th year students in a public school in Adana in Turkey. There are 42 students in experimental group and 39 in control group. Creative drama activities were used to develop social studies achievement and attitude of students as a treatment for the experimental group. The treatment consisted of 15 hours, 40 minutes sessions that equal a class hour in school and 3 hours a week. Control groups had been taught by classroom teachers as the way they do traditionally. Data collection tools are “Attitude Towards Social Studies Scale” developed  by Gencel “Achievement Test” developed by the researchers.  Data were processed by using covariance analysis. Findings indicated that creative drama method has a significant effect on social studies achievement and students’ attitude towards social studies but not a significant effect on retention of social studies knowledge.

In the rapidly developing age of technology, the contribution of using multimedia-supported instructional materials in the field of teaching technologies to science education has been increasing steadily. The purpose of this research is to compare the multimedia learning instructional materials prepared according to the 7E learning model and the students' academic success and the effect on the reminiscence of the learned knowledge in the science course described using traditional methods and models. In this research, a quadruple pattern of solomon was used as a semi-experimental design. As a data collection tool, the Matter's Change Unit Success Test was used. The research was conducted in fall semester of 2014-2015 academic year and on 92 fifth grade students. Experimental groups were given instructional materials prepared according to 7E model with multimedia support and control groups were taught with traditional method. There was no statistically significant difference in the pre-test scores of the experimental-1 and control-1 groups according to the independent t-test results in the applied success test but there was a statistically significant difference in favor of the experimental groups according to the post-test and retention test scores. According to the analyzed results; There is a statistically significant difference between the post-test and retention test scores of the experimental groups. There is also a statistically significant difference between the post-test and retention test scores of the control groups. But this difference is in favor of experimental groups. According to the results of the study, it can be said that the learning material prepared according to the multimedia supported 7E model influences the academic achievement positively and the learned information is more memorable.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of blog activities on elementary students’ environmental literacy in science class. The relationships between students’ environmental literacy levels, their parents’ interest in environmental activities and the frequency of outdoor activities they do have also been also examined. Pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design has been utilized. The participants of the study are 80 seventh-grade elementary school students. The data have been gathered through “Environmental Literacy Scale”. After that, the instructor has created a blog to share some movies, animations and reflective questions for all the students. The students could follow and engage in all the sharing. The activities have lasted for eight weeks. Descriptive statistics, t-test and regression analysis have been tested via the data. The results have indicated that there is a significant difference between pre and post test scores regarding the students’ “environmental knowledge”, “attitude towards environment” and “being responsible for environment”. Furthermore; positive but weak relationship has been detected between students’ environmental literacy levels and parents’ interests in environmental activities. On the other hand, there is a moderate, positive correlation between students’ interest in environmental problems and involving in outdoor activities with parents(r=0.423, p=0.001). Overall, students’ involvements in blog activities and doing outdoor activities with parents have been found to be effective in acquiring environmental literacy.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate pre-service history teachers’ perceived self-efficacy and the effect of pedagogical formation training on this perception. The study is based on a one-group pretest-posttest research design, which is a type of pre-experimental design. For the purpose of the study, in the first week of the formation training, the “Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale” developed by Tschannen-Moran and Hoy and adapted to Turkish by Capa, Cakiroglu and Sarikaya was administered as a pre-test to a group of 178 pre-service history teachers who underwent pedagogical formation training in 2016-2017 academic year in two different universities in Turkey. The same scale was administered again as a post-test at the end of the 28-week training. The study has found out that the pedagogical formation training did not make a significant difference in pre-service history teachers’ perceived self-efficacy except for the classroom management subscale, in which the self-efficacy scores of pre-service history teachers decreased after the pedagogical formation training.

Advanced technology helps educational institutes to improve student learning performance and outcomes. In this study, our aim is to measure and assess student engagement and collaborative learning in engineering classes when using online technology in solving physics problems. The interactive response system used in this study is a collaborative learning tool that allows teachers to monitor their students’ response and progress in real time. Our results indicated that students have highly positive attitude toward using the interactive response system as a tool in education in order to improve collaborative learning and student engagement in classes. Consequently, student-learning performance has been improved considerably, and technology was successfully incorporated in engineering classes.

This study aims to present the design and pilot testing procedures of the two specific self-report questionnaires were used to measure the two key aspects of reading motivation, self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation in the field of literary (narrative) reading, and the partial factors that jointly shape them. These instruments were outlined in advance, tested on a small scale and finally administered in a pre-post (quasi)experimental-control group research study, in order to investigate the effect of an intervention reading program to 6 graders. The measurement tools have good validity and reliability evidence, but further construct validity analysis should be done.

Empirical directions to innovate e-assessments and to support the theoretical development of e-learning are discussed by presenting a new learning assessment system based on cognitive technology. Specifically, this system encompassing trained neural nets that can discriminate between students who successfully integrated new knowledge course content from students who did not successfully integrate this new knowledge (either because they tried short-term retention or did not acquire new knowledge). This neural network discrimination capacity is based on the idea that once a student has integrated new knowledge into long-term memory, this knowledge will be detected by computer-implemented semantic priming studies (before and after a course) containing schemata-related words from course content (which are obtained using a natural semantic network technique). The research results demonstrate the possibility of innovating e-assessments by implementing mutually constrained responsive and constructive cognitive techniques to evaluate online knowledge acquisition.

This study explored in a sample of 560 high level education students their judgment formation to perceived self-efficacy to solve mathematical tasks. Students had to read 36 experimental vignettes describing educative scenarios to learn mathematics. Each scenario presented four manipulated pieces of information (learning modality, task difficulty, task relevance, and structure). After reading each scenario students were required to provide judgments regarding their believed self-efficacy to solve mathematical tasks described in the vignette by using a scale. Results showed that in regard to how students perceived their self-efficacy they could be grouped in two clusters (high and moderate). Most relevant factors to their judgment formation were task difficulty, task relevance and structure. Here, both groups used the same cognitive algebra mechanism to integrate factor information. Here, students valuated academic performance and feedback (e.g. difficulty and relevance) as most relevant even when they are conscious that learning is a primordial target. These and other results are discussed in the paper.

The state of mathematical thinking is considered to have an effect on the formation of anxiety regarding teaching mathematics. It is hypothesized that with the formation of mathematical thinking, the anxiety in teachers regarding teaching mathematics will be reduced. Since mathematical thinking is a skill acquired starting from the early years of education, the anxiety in form teachers in primary school regarding teaching mathematics is important. Within this context, the objective of this study is to investigate the effect of mathematical thinking states of form teachers on their anxieties regarding mathematics teaching. The sample group comprises 194 form teachers working in state schools of Bagcilar district, Istanbul province in the spring term of 2015-2016 academic year. As data collection tools, mathematical thinking scale and anxiety scale for the mathematics teaching anxiety of form teachers were used. To test the predictive power of mathematical thinking regarding the mathematics teaching anxiety, Multiple Linear Regression Analysis was used. It was found that the form teachers had high mathematical thinking scores and had low anxiety scores. A low degree, negative and significant correlation was found between the mathematical thinking and anxiety of form teachers regarding mathematics teaching. Moreover, it was found that mathematical thinking had an effect on the anxiety in form teachers regarding mathematics teaching.

Mathematics educators have reported on many issues regarding students’ mathematical education, particularly students who received mathematics education at different departments such as engineering, science or primary school, including their difficulties with mathematical concepts, their understanding of and preferences for mathematical concepts. This study aimed to investigate the opinions of primary-school teacher education students in terms of their perceptions of difficulty level of the mathematics courses, change in their achievement, if there is any, and interest in mathematics after completing these courses, and factors affecting their achievement and interest level in these courses. Being qualitative in nature, this study was a case study. The data were analyzed using the content analysis and descriptive methods. According to the results, most students stated that they faced mathematics course content with unexpected level of difficulty. After taking basic mathematics courses, the percentage of students with decreased level of interest and achievement in mathematics was found higher than the students who experienced an increase in their interest and achievement. Students underlined such significant factors for the change of their interest and achievement in mathematics as prior knowledge, lecturer(s), and content coverage. Finally, most of the students viewed mathematics courses as a beneficiary tool for their professional development.

Teacher wellbeing and performance is affected by their ability to cope with the demands of the profession. This pilot non-randomized, waitlist-controlled study investigated the impact of a mindfulness intervention (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) on teachers' wellbeing, self-regulation ability and classroom performance applying a mixed-method design. The sample was comprised of 32 German school teachers (93% female) which were distributed to a control and intervention group. Compared to the control condition, the intervention showed medium to high effect sizes on most outcome variables at post-test and results were sustained at follow-up. Mediation analyses showed that changes in mindfulness at post-test mediated changes in outcome variables at follow-up. Unexpectedly, the intervention seemed to negatively affect teacher engagement. Qualitative interviews highlighted the way mindfulness may influence teacher engagement and improve performance. Limitations of this study and future directions of research are discussed. 

This research aimed to investigate relationships between quality of work life, burnout, school alienation, affective commitment and organizational citizenship behaviors. In this context, a model was proposed based on the literature review and the model was tested through structural equation model. The study group of the research consists of 314 volunteer teachers working in the state schools in Kilis in 2016-2017 academic years. The data was collected through work-related quality of life scale, burnout scale, school alienation scale, affective commitment scale and organizational citizenship behaviors scale. The analysis with descriptive, correlation, path and bootstrap methods were used to analyze the data. As a result of the analysis, it was found that teachers' perceptions for quality of work life have a negative effect on burnout and school alienation, whereas they have a positive effect on affective commitment. Besides, their perceptions for affective commitment have a positive impact on organizational citizenship behaviors. Another important result derived from the research is that teachers' perceptions for burnout and school alienation play partial mediation roles in the effect of their perceptions for quality of work life on affective commitment. Based on these results, it can be suggested that teachers' working conditions should be constantly improved.

The aim of this research is to determine the thoughts of the teachers about the concepts of "Smart Board", "Computer", "Internet" and "Social Media" from the Instructional technologies of the secondary school teachers with different branches through metaphors. In the research, a qualitative research model was used to identify teachers' thoughts in metaphor analysis from various branches about the use of instructional technologies in the national field. Within the scope of the qualitative research model, the phenomenology design was used. In order to find out what kind of thoughts teachers have about teaching materials from the participants "Smart Board / Computer / Internet / Social Media is like / similar to…..; Because ..." they were asked to complete their covenants. As a result of the research, 25 valid metaphors belonging to the concepts of smart board, computer, social media and 27 of internet concept were obtained from secondary school teachers. The most book (f = 4) metaphor for smart board concept, brain and memory (f = 2) metaphors for computer concept, most air (f = 3) and medicine, ocean, water (f = 2) metaphors for internet concept and the drug and virus (f = 2) metaphors related to the concept of social media. The metaphors of the concept of smart board are classified into 5 conceptual categories with common characteristics related to each other, 6 categories with common features related to computer and internet concepts, and 7 conceptual categories with social media concept related to each other. In the research, it was reached that the secondary school teachers expressed positive opinions about the concept of smart board and computer, partially negative about the concept of the internet but more negative opinions about the concept of social media.

Kutadgu Bilig is one of the literal works that shed light on Turk-Islam history and culture. In this study, it is aimed to examine Kutagu Bilig in terms of values that are involved in social studies teaching program.  In research, Kutadgu Bilig work that is written by Yusuf Has Hacip and is adopted to Turkish in today by Silahdaroglu is benefitted as a collect data tool. In data collect period, document analyze technique that is one of the qualitative research methods is used and data is evaluated by descriptive analyze. In result of study, it is reached that justice, giving importance to family unit, responsibility, scientificness and honesty values take place mostly and peace value exists least.

The purpose of this study is to examine the opinions of middle school mathematics teachers on the integration of mathematics course and social issues. For this purpose, qualitative research method was used in this study. As for determining the participants of the research, criterion sampling among purposeful sampling methods was used. Being a middle school mathematics teacher as an occupation was considered as a criterion for determining the participants. The participants of the research consist of 13 middle school mathematics teachers in Turkey. So as to collect the research data, the semi-structured interview form created by the researchers was used. The data analysis was performed according to the content analysis, and Nvivo 10 program was used for the analysis. As a result of this study, the themes of the situation and methods of the integration of mathematics course and social issues, the attainment of democratic values in mathematics course and the ways of its attainment, gaining awareness of social justice and equality in mathematics course and the ways of its gaining, the activities performed by teachers for social issues in mathematics course and the teachers’ suggestions for the integration of mathematics course and social issues were reached and the results were discussed within this frame.

In this research, images related to national identity were examined in history textbooks. In the first stage, nationalism, the historical course of the Turkish national identity and related literature were examined, and some components of national identity were determined.  Various categories related to national identity have been formed from the elements obtained. The data about the categories were collected through document analysis.  In the second phase, 8 history textbooks taught in the years 1930-2014 were selected as samples. Content analysis was used in the examination of the mentioned textbooks, and quantitative method was chosen in data analysis. In this context, data obtained by document analysis were analyzed with SPSS 13 statistical program. Chi-square tests, Bonferroni corrections for chi-square tests and graphs were used in the analyzes. The significance level for all analyzes was taken as .05. In the research, it was determined that republic values and revolutions, national struggle and the images related to the founder leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk be a most used in Turkish Republic Revolution History and Kemalism textbooks concerning national identity.  In addition, it has been found that the images of national symbols such as homeland maps, flag, parliament, and capital are used too much for the national identity.