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.

The aim of this study was to determine mental models of 334 pre-school children concerning school. Children in the city center of Kastamonu in the Western Black Sea region of Turkey were included. Content analysis was conducted on pictures drawn by the children, and the models were split into two groups, scientific and nonscientific. The scientific group was split into three types; the nonscientific group, into four. About 40% of the children had a scientificbased school perception, while 60% were nonscientific. No significant difference was found between the mental models of females and males. Few studies have investigated mental models, so this study fills a gap, but further studies would aid the understanding of the relevant pedagogic architecture.

This exploratory study is concerned about the extent to which a sample of 163 pre-school, primary and secondary Brazilian school teachers, expressed their opinion on how neuroscience might help their teaching and pupils´ learning. Evaluation instruments for Brazilian pupils were analysed. Two questionnaires were completed by the teachers. Results of a quantitative analysis indicated that in general teachers believe that neuroscience may contribute to the teaching and learning of their subject matter. An outline for an elective neuroscience and education course is presented. Educational implications are discussed.

This study investigated the effects of analogy on the elimination of students’ misconceptions about direct current circuits, students’ achievement and the attitudes towards physics lessons. The sample of this study consisted of 51 11th grade students from two different classes. While one of the classes was the experimental group where analogy was used in the lessons, the other class was the control group where the traditional methods are employed in lessons and this selection was made randomly. When the obtained results were examined, it was seen that teaching with analogy has a significantly positive effect on the elimination of misconception and achievement although it has almost no effect on the attitudes of towards physics.

Motivation to learn foreign languages is a significant determinant of successful language acquisition. The subject has been widely researched in the past, and since the early 1990s a great deal of empirical research related to the classroom environment has been proposed to expand theory into everyday classroom practice. I present an empirical, longitudinal (3-year) study to explore the relationship between and changes in foreign language learning motivation, learning motivation and self-concept in the 5th, 6th and 8th forms of elementary school. The same tests (Kozéki-Entwistle’s Learning Motivation Questionnaire, the Tenessee SelfConcept Scale, and Clément, Dörnyei and Noels’ Foreign Language Learning Motivation questionnaire) were administered three times, so I was able to compare the results and draw conclusions about developmental tendencies. A strong correlation was found between motivational and self-esteem scores, and between learning and foreign language learning motivation subscales. It is necessary to highlight the importance of the Moral, Family and Social Self, which draws our attention to the family values and beliefs students are equipped with, when they enter the school. The significant decrease in motivation and self-esteem in the period under investigation focuses our attention on problems of adolescence, and challanges language teachers to establish a highly motivating classroom practice.

Mathematics is well known as a subject area where there can be problems in terms of understanding as well as retaining positive attitudes. In a large study involving 813 school students (ages approximately 10-12) drawn from two different school systems in Pakistan, the effect of limited working memory capacity on performance in mathematics was explored along with a survey of areas of difficulty and student attitudes. This involved looking at student perceptions of their experiences, the nature of the difficulties they have with mathematics and possible reasons for these difficulties. The overall aim is to explore the extent of the effect of working memory and to gain insights so that practical ways forward to enhance mathematics education can be identified. It was found that limited working memory capacity has a very strong influence on performance, confirming other studies. Indeed, if the cognitive load exceeds the capacity of working memory, understanding becomes a casualty, with consequent attitude deterioration. Students need to be able to see that mathematics has a purpose in being able to be applied to real-life situations. However, attempts to develop applications may often generate further working memory overload. Curricula devised by those outside the classroom can sometimes be inappropriate while topics causing the greatest problems at these ages and include areas of geometry, statistics and the applications of mathematics.

Primary education (1-8 Grades) Visual Arts Instruction Schedule is a program built up and constituted by a commission composed of academicians and specialist teachers in their fields within the body of Ministry of National Education in year 2006 on the basis of “constructivist approach” philosophy of education. Instruction Schedule composed by three learning fields, whichever philosophy of education they serve for, they have to be incentive and feeding the gains of three fields evenly for cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning looked for in ethically and educational sciences and be appropriate for the particularity of the course. On the other hand, instruction schedule also should consider the requirements of the era. This studyhas been structured upon the research in which the teaching program is separated into cognitive, affective and psychomotor field skills and which has been previously published in the journal of National Education, issue number 190. What is targeted in this paper is, to classify and evaluate 1-8 grade gains of just structured instruction schedule within the boundaries of learning fields in accordance to cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning conditions.

Emerging evidence indicates that culture influences pupils learning of science. However, the influence of culture on science learning is usually not considered when developing science curricular for both primary and secondary schools. This study investigated the extent to which primary and secondary school pupils believe in cultural interpretations of the physical phenomenon of ‘heat’ associated with anger and the influence of education level, ethnic communities and gender on cultural beliefs. Cross-sectional survey research design was used. The target population was Standard Seven, Form one and Form Three pupils in ten districts selected from Nyanza, Rift Valley, Central, Eastern and Coast Provinces in Kenya. The ten districts were selected purposively to represent 10 different ethnic communities from the five provinces. A total of 2837 secondary and 625 primary school pupils participated. The pupils were drawn from 15 primary and 31 secondary schools .A questionnaire was used to gather information from pupils. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used in analyzing data. Hypotheses were tested using the chi square ( X 2) statistic at α = 0.05 level of significance. Some of the results obtained give statistically significant relationship between pupils’ beliefs in cultural interpretations of scientific phenomenon of heat associated with anger and the communities where they come from. This implies that such beliefs are confined to specific communities studied. There appears to be no significant association between pupils’ beliefs in cultural interpretations of the scientific phenomenon of heat and level of education in some of the communities. The implication is that education reduces beliefs in cultural interpretations in such communities but does not eradicate such beliefs. There was also no statistically significant association between pupils’ beliefs in cultural interpretations of the scientific phenomenon of heat and gender, implying that both boys and girls equally believe in cultural interpretations. The findings from this study inform curriculum developers of some of the cultural beliefs that are likely to influence the learning of science. It is recommended that teachers discuss cultural interpretations of scientific concepts before introducing them in their lessons.

The contribution of special needs assistants (SNA) is becoming increasingly important in inclusive and special classrooms. However, the profession itself has remained unexplored. The purpose of this article is to describe special needs assistants’ perceptions on their education, professional competence, the content and significance of their work within the school system of Finland, and the further development of their role and content of their work. 171 special needs assistants from the province of Lapland participated in the research. This research was a mixed methods research where the data was collected in 2010 through a semi-structured questionnaire that consisted both quantitative and qualitative elements and was, therefore, analyzed both by using qualitative and quantitative analyzing methods. The results highlighted the diversity, challenges and development needs of special needs assistants’ work. Special needs assistants are strength and can work as a support for teachers, students, and parents.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how mental rotation strategies affect the identification of chemical structural formulas. This study conducted event-related potentials (ERPs) experiments. In addition to the data collected in the ERPs, a Chemical Structure Conceptual Questionnaire and interviews were also administered for data collection. Eighteen university students majoring in chemistry were recruited. In the ERP experiments, the participants were required to identify 2D figures, 2D chemical structural formulas, 3D objects and 3D chemical structural formulas. The contours of 2D figures are similar to those of 2D chemical structural formulas, but they contain no content knowledge. Likewise, the contours of 3D objects are similar to 3D chemical structural formulas without content knowledge. The results showed that all students used similar strategies of mental rotation in identifying 2D figures, 3D objects and 3D chemical structural formulas. However, the high-achieving students used different strategies in identifying 2D figures and chemical structural formulas, while the low-achieving students tended to use similar strategies of mental rotation in identifying both 2D figures and chemical structural formulas. The results indicate that some of the difficulties in identifying 2D chemical structural formulas that students encounter are due to their inappropriate strategies of mental rotation.

This paper describes the procedure of developing an instructional tool, ‘concept mapping’ and its effectiveness in making the material meaningful to the students. In Pakistan, the traditional way of teaching science subjects at all levels at school relies heavily on memorization. The up-to-date data obtained from qualitative and quantitative research strongly supports the value of concept mapping as an instructional tool both for cognitive and affective gains. This study seeks to contribute to this development by considering how the insights of Ausubel can be converted into an effective and efficient instructional method. It was found that concept maps help improving achievement of the students and make learning more meaningful so that retrieval is possible.

Critical thinking is seen as a highly desirable way of thinking that needs to be encouraged in all areas of higher education.  However, it is not easy to conceptualise critical thinking in ways that can help in its development and in its assessment. Recent policy documents in Pakistan have laid emphasis on the development of critical thinking skills in higher education and The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan worked with USAID to publish new course guidance for Functional English, a mandatory course, as a part of introducing a revised four year BEd honours programme. The course includes aims like giving reasons to justify a view, distinguishing between fact and opinion and enabling students to develop argumentation skills. All these aims require students to develop skills involving questioning: asking questions of what is provided, who has provided it and what its meaning might be, key features of critical thinking.

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.

Entrepreneurship has been an intriguing issue as an indicator of economic development and social welfare particularly being focused on last decades. Furthermore, the issue of immigration has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Nowadays, the quality of the workforce and it's training processes are not getting only progressively important but as well the participation of migrants in the labor market will be a great problem in the future. Migrant’s entrepreneurial tendencies and career expectations designation are the main objectives of this research. This research was designed as a comparative qualitative model, and the structured written interview technique was used in order to collect the data. Randomly sampling study groups were formed according to methods of maximum diversity. The sampling group was formed by the participation of 12 Syrian migrant high school students who live and get trained in Altindag, a district of Ankara, Turkey and 13 Syrian migrant high school students who live and get trained in Kreuzberg, a district of Berlin, Germany. The collected data were analyzed by content analysis technique. The results of the research reveal that immigrant students have a high level of entrepreneurship in Germany, the nonetheless low level of the expectations of future career prospects in Turkey. Thus, the absences of sociocultural and economic areas where they will use entrepreneurial tendencies are a serious obstacle to them. Moreover, participants argue that they do not want to stay in Turkey anymore, and most of them intend to emigrate to Europe or another country if they can do so. Unlike Germany, many of the participants in Turkey neither know what they want to be nor how they want to live in the future and nor have they made any career planning.

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.

This research study investigates the cognitive, psychological and personal factors affecting the accuracy and fluency of English language usage among Arab learners. Early research led by Chomsky (1965) and Krashen (1981) suggested that an individual’s Language Acquisition Device once triggered at the appropriate time and supported with adequate Comprehensible Input can lead to automatic development of an L2. Relevant research suggests that children are born with the instinct or innate facility for language acquisition provided they have no physical or mental impairment (Al Ghazali, 2006). However, past research (Engin and Seven, 2014; Hanani, 2009; Gupta, 2008; Latu, 1994) has led to the identification of additional factors that go beyond the cognitive domain. These factors were examined individually and against a background of teaching methods, phonetics application, and classroom conditions. In this research, a mixed research study was designed in which a survey and interviews were conducted with a number of university students. With minimal effect from the researcher, the data were collected to examine the influence of these factors on learners’ proficiency of English language and application. The findings reveal that Arab learners’ ability to learn English is dependent on psychological motivation, physical needs to apply it, and personal reasoning.

The aim of this study is to reveal the benefits gained from “Special Training Methods II” course and the problems prospective mathematics teachers encountered with it. The case study method was used in the study. The participants in the study were 34 prospective mathematics teachers studying at a Primary School Mathematics Education Department. The data collection tools were a form composed of open-ended questions and semi-structured interviews. Descriptive analysis of the quantitative data was carried out. In the “Special Teaching Methods II” course, beginning in the spring term of the 2015-2016 academic year, teaching activities on “multiple intelligences”, “discovery”, “group work”, “problem-solving”, “history of mathematics” and “computer-assisted teaching” were developed and implemented. It was concluded that these activities helped students like mathematics more, understand the importance of helping each other and cooperation and have more enjoyable lessons, as well as aiding their cognitive, social and emotional development. It was also found that through these activities participants improved their belief in themselves and increased their confidence regarding teaching mathematics. The participants also faced with some difficulties during the application process. They mostly mentioned that preparing worksheets was time-consuming, finding a school to perform the activity was hard and students were reluctant.

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 study investigated differences in students’ reported overall test anxiety before, during, or after test taking among two school-levels and gender. Differences among three test anxiety components (thoughts, off-task behaviors, and autonomic reactions) were also examined. Participants were 725 primary (349 females, 376 males) and 375 middle (180 females, 195 males) school students from a metropolitan city in Turkey. Turkish students’ reported overall test anxiety declined from primary to middle school, with females showing higher test anxiety throughout school years. Whereas students rated thoughts high, autonomic reactions were rated low; followed by off-task behaviors. Female and male students did not differ in thoughts and autonomic reactions. School-level differences were found in off-task behaviors and autonomic reactions. The pattern of Turkish students’ overall test anxiety derived as a combination of thoughts, off-task behaviors, and autonomic reactions was discussed, and educational implications were offered.