Once a privilege for the members of the elite, writing is now a staple of everyday life accessible to the masses. Despite its significance for individuals’ economic, psychological, and educational well-being, it may not always be utilized to its full capacity. This is partly due to reductionist approaches to writing without full consideration of its various manifestations in life. This paper will argue that writing is more than the inscription of letters and symbols on paper (or on screen). The common misconception that highly developed artistic skills are a must for one to be a “good” writer often prevents individuals from engaging in rewarding learning experiences in and outside of formal education contexts. The realization of the ways in which writing in fact is a part of our daily lives and therefore cannot be divorced from learning throughout life will reduce concerns about a possible lack in writing skills. It will also be maintained in this paper that there is complementarity between lifelong learning and writing; just as lifelong learning requires the utilization of writing skills, greater involvement in writing and enhancements to one’s writing skills support lifelong learning skills. This paper will also propose that an emphasis on writing across curriculum in formal education settings as well as outside of formal education will help prepare individuals for engagement in continuous learning throughout life.

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.

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of the activities, which are prepared by teaching techniques that support scientific creativity, on the scientific creativity levels of prospective pre-school teachers. In the research, combined design is used, which is one of the mixed research approaches. The study group of the research included a total of 46 prospective pre-school teachers who have studied in the Education Faculty of Kafkas University in 2016-2017 academic year. The applications were carried out in the "science education" which is one of the third-grade 5th-semester courses of the pre-primary education program. The application process was completed in 4 hours a week for a total of 40 hours. In the analysis of the quantitative data collected by Scientific Creativity Test, percentage calculation and t-test were used. Explanatory and inferential codes were used in the analysis of qualitative data obtained from the in-class observations. As a result of the research, it was seen that the course activities in which different techniques were used positively influenced the scientific creativity levels of the prospective teachers. Prospective teachers' level of skills involved in creative trait, creative process, and creative product sub-dimensions also developed. It has been suggested in the direction of these results that different techniques should be used together to develop scientific creativity.

The aim of the present study was to figure out whether university students’ learning approaches were shaped via their achievement goal orientations, academic self-efficacy and hope or not. The other objective was to examine if these psychological constructs varied in accordance with the demographic variables including gender, age and class level. 332 undergraduates from two different universities who were in the year of junior and senior participated in the study. The Achievement Goal Orientations Scale, the Academic Self-Efficacy Scale, the Dispositional Hope Scale and the Demographic Form were utilized to reveal the predictive power of these constructs on their learning attitudes measured by the Revised Two-Factor Study Process Questionnaire. Multiple linear regression analysis indicated that learning goal orientation was a pivotal predictor of both deep and surface approach to learning. Academic self-efficacy and hope were the crucial precursors of deep approach while performance-avoidance goal inclination was a considerable predictor of surface approach. Independent samples t-test analysis displayed that the female undergraduates were superior to the male ones in terms of the learning goal tendency. And the students (20 to 22 aged) demonstrated higher scores on the same variable than the other ones (23 to 25 aged). On the basis of class level, there were no significant differences in the scores of achievement goal orientations, academic self-efficacy, hope and learning approaches. The results pointed out the fact that such concepts pertinent to an undergraduate’s academic performance could be viewed as distinctive features engendering different learning attitudes toward scholastic training.

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.

In the present study, the aim was to investigate 9th grade students’ geometrical figure apprehension. To this end, the Figure Apprehension Cognitive Processes Test (FACPT), constructed by the researchers of the study, was administered to 51 ninth grade students, with whom clinical interviews were also conducted. As a result of the data analysed, it was found that the perceptual, discursive and operative types of apprehension of more than half of the students were not at enough level for high school geometry. Most of the students were found to be unsuccessful in recognizing the various sub-figures present within a geometric figure, in transforming verbal information to visual information, in deriving at verbal information based on visual information, in arriving at conclusions without being influenced by the appearance of a figure, and in decomposing and recomposing geometric figures. This shows that teachers need to focus on not only conceptual knowledge but also the structure of the figure apprehension processes of students prior to geometry classes.

Currently, it is taken for granted that teachers have to take into account the conceptions in order to achieve some efficient learning, the latter are generally resistant and may hinder the learning. Studies have shown that learning amounts to make conceptions evolve which play a determining role in the appropriation of scientific concepts such as neurotransmission, which is the subject of our study. This concept is present in the Life Science syllabus as early as high school. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of an interactive approach on the evolution of students' conceptions of neurotransmission. For this purpose, a questionnaire was administered to the first two years’ students (second year) in the Life Sciences stream at Dhar El Mahraz Faculty of Science in Fez during the academic year 2016-2017. This questionnaire was in the form of a pre-test and a post-test on learning/teaching of neurotransmission. The results of the study showed that the approach which was adopted had a positive effect on the evolution of the students' conceptions of neurotransmission in that it apparently contributed to a conceptual change for them.

The aim of this study is to present pre-service biology teachers with reading texts about the research of Van Helmont and Joseph Priestley relate to the subject of photosynthesis, for their familiarization with the processual and contextual aspects of science and their understanding of the nature of science, and to reveal the extent to which these texts contribute to the teacher candidates. The study was carried out by “action research method”.  The sample consisted of 66 biology pre-service teachers studying at Karadeniz Technical University between the years of 2016 to 2018. In this study, two separate reading texts were prepared in order to increase pre-service teachers’ processual and contextual understanding, and after the teacher candidates had read the texts, they were asked to answer the related questions. Percentage and frequency values were determined by grouping the answers as “correct, partially correct, incorrect and unanswered”. The fact that in this study, only 47% of the pre-service teachers were able to form a correct hypothesis means that their skills in this regard are in need of development. Candidates experienced some difficulty in interpreting statements that were not given explicitly in the text. The candidates' level of critical thinking is at a good level. It has been determined that they have post-modern view as epistemological belief. There is a need for designing instructional materials covering conceptual, processual, contextual dimensions of science in different subjects at university level and presenting them to biology teachers in book format.

The purpose of this research is to describe the effectiveness of STEM on the physics concepts understanding seen from gender differences. The research method used is a type of quasi-experimental design with 2x2 factorial design and saturated sampling technique. The data collecting technique used a tested method to see the results of students’ concept understanding. Hypothesis testing was done using two-way ANOVA 2 x 2 factorial designs. The results of the study are: (1) there are differences in STEM and conventional learning on concepts understanding and the use of STEM learning is more effective than the conventional one; (2) there are differences in the results of understanding the concept between male and female students where male students are higher than female students; and, (3) there is no interaction between learning and gender towards concepts understanding. The research recommends designing the STEM-integrated ESciT learning to be relevant with the indicator measurements and to manage the learning effectively to obtain optimum learning outcome.

This study was aimed at investigating whether or not there is an interaction between learning approach and social intelligence towards response fluency. A number of 126 eighth grade students (M = 13.9; SD = 0.5 years) in Bojonegoro, Indonesia were randomly selected to participate in this study. This research used 2x3 factorial quasi-experiment with the matching static comparison design. The statistical Analysis Of Covariance (ANCOVA) ware implemented for analysis of data in the study. The results show that: there is a significant difference in response to fluency between students who learn with a scientific approach and direct learning approach; there are significant differences in response to fluency between students who have high, medium, and low social intelligence, both in scientific and direct learning approaches, the students with high social intelligence levels have better response to fluency than those with moderate social intelligence or low, and the students with moderate social intelligence have better response to fluency than those with low social intelligence, in all levels of social intelligence, the students who were taught by using scientific approach have better response to fluency than those who were taught by using direct learning approach.

The structure sense is a part that must be learned in order to help understand and construct connection in abstract algebra. This study aimed at building the pattern of a structure sense as a profile of the structure sense in group property. Using a qualitative study, the structure sense of group property was explored through lecturing activity of abstract algebra course from two individual assignments given to the students. The students who could provide the best answers from the first and second individual assignments were chosen to be the respondents. The data from the second assignment, then, was analyzed through presentation, interpretation, coding, making a pattern, leveling and continued with clarification through an interview. The results of the study show that there were six patterns of structure sense answers and five levels of structure senses made by the students as the profile of structure sense. The conclusion is the inability to recognize the structure of the set elements, operation notations, and binary operation properties is one of the causes of the constraints in structuring the proof construction of the group. Thus, a thinking of mathematics connection is needed in structure understanding as a connection between symbol in learning and the symbol of abstract.

El Oro province undergoes a high rate of student’s withdrawal from distance courses offered by the local university. The distance education model gives for granted that the regular teachers are proficient for remote tutoring. This research attempts to reveal the state-of-art of this educative model in a provincial university. The study focused on a quantitative-qualitative explorative approach to determine, whether, if withdrawal is more frequent in introductory courses or not. Among the main causes for withdrawal were found: (1) the naive of learners in high education programs, (2) the inconsistency of the university proposals (academic and administrative) and; (3) the most important, the deficiencies in remote tutoring.

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 industrial revolution era 4.0 has now become a major topic in every country. Various sectors respond quickly to this problem, including education. In response to this, there are several aspects of skills that students must master. One of them is problem-solving skills. One of the aspects that influence the students’ problem-solving skills is the context and problem-based learning model. The purpose of this study is to describe the effect of the model on students' skills to solve physics problems. The research method used is a quasi-experimental research design with non-equivalent control group design. The data analysis technique used Independent Sample T-Test by PASW 18 with a significance 5%. Based on the results of the Independent Sample T-Test can be concluded that there is an effect on the model that was applied with a significant gain of 0,00. The results showed that the context and problem-based learning (C-PBL) model affected the physics problem-solving skills. The C-PBL model is able to improve the students’ physics problem-solving skills, communication skills, the students’ confidence in learning, as well as improving students’ understanding of physics lessons conceptually.

University attempts to respond to globalization to build international trust by conducting internationalization as the bridge of their selected strategies. The efforts needed to build international trust are promotion strategies. This study aims to elaborate the effective promotion strategies in Jenderal Soedirman University, Indonesia. The data were collected by some deep interviews, observation, and documentation. The result shows that the promotion strategies includes, first, the university’s direction to be recognized globally by a strong vision, international accreditation for its study programs, and being the center of special studies. Second, the university publicizes the university’s programs, activities, excellence, and uniqueness through printed or online media, foreign institutions, and individuals. Third, the university initiates international collaborations with foreign universities and institutions by building good interpersonal communication, forming teams for international collaborations, initiating activities to build trust among individuals, and getting involved in international events. Last, the university offers scholarships for foreign students to increase inbound students.

As we have seen from the current COVID-19 pandemic, misconceptions concerning viruses can lead to disease spread and panic. Therefore, it is imperative to determine misconceptions held concerning epidemics and pandemics. One virus that warrants study of misconceptions, albeit given limited attention in the West, is the Ebola virus. An assessment of college students’ knowledge and misconceptions about the Ebola virus was created and validated using data from 203 non-science majors at a Midwestern United States university. The data were analyzed using both classical and Rasch measurement methods to make a case for the validity of the assessment and to explore students’ misconceptions. The assessment was shown to be a valid and useful measure for students’ knowledge and misconceptions concerning Ebola. Integrating a confidence scale into students’ responses made the scale more reliable and assisted in identifying students’ tenacious misconceptions. Students displayed multiple misconceptions about viruses, including confusion between the characteristics of viruses and prokaryotes.  Students also displayed misconceptions about Ebola itself, including the overestimation of the number of Ebola strains and the number of patients who experience massive blood loss, misunderstandings about the incubation period, and overestimation of the mortality in comparison to other diseases like Influenza and Anthrax. This assessment can be used as a starting point in future studies to determine what misconceptions people have about Ebola and which types of educational and behavioral interventions need to be undertaken.

Despite its well-documented benefits for training a wide range of professionals, including teacher candidates in almost all content areas, the incorporation of service-learning into foreign language teacher education is relatively new, and most research only dealt with narrative accounts of non-work-related charitable activities. Consequently, this study sought to investigate the impact of the 20-hour peer-tutoring project on the teaching beliefs, community service attitudes, personal and professional development of 14 Turkish EFL teacher candidates. A comparison between their pre- and post-service metaphors revealed a conceptual shift not only in their teaching perspectives from the behaviorist to constructivist paradigm for knowledge acquisition, but also in their community partnership approaches from the unidirectional to reciprocal pattern of altruism towards their tutees. The classification of their written reflections into six types of significant learning demonstrated that despite a relatively greater focus on expressing their foundational knowledge and application practices, a more balanced distribution of learning gains was achieved between the two overarching spheres of academic learning and personal growth, when coursework engagement and multimodal reflections were co-implemented. They reported developing effective teacher dispositions, interpersonal skills and social responsibility, valued intrinsic rewards for their contributions to the youth well-being, and also appreciated the informal professional learning opportunities the peer-tutoring service offered, though without establishing their own learning agendas.

Achieving educational goals is based on the skills and competence of teachers; therefore, professional development of teachers is important to policy and decision-makers. Worldwide, the percentage of teachers who leave the profession within their first years of teaching is high therefore, professional support is essential to ease on their integration. Previous research indicates a positive and significant correlation between teachers' self-efficacy and their attitudes toward the teaching profession. Our study included three hypotheses: 1) teachers' pedagogical applications serve as mediators for the relationship between teachers' self-efficacy and their attitudes toward the profession; 2) participating in a professional development school (PDS) training program interacts with teachers' self-efficacy in predicting their attitudes toward the profession; and, 3) participation in a PDS training program will positively affect the two variables. A close and open-ended questionnaire was replied by 300 novice teachers, some of whom participated in the PDS program and others who did not. Findings indicate that the relationship between teachers' sense of self-efficacy and their attitudes towards the teaching profession was partially mediated by: applying constructivist pedagogical practices; matching to differences between learners; collaboration between fellow teachers; accountability; planning and teaching management; and academy-community relationships. Participation in a PDS program was not found as a moderator variable for this relationship, but novice teachers who participated in this program had a significant higher sense of self-efficacy and more positive attitudes towards the teaching profession. Findings are important for designing novice teacher training programs with an emphasis on the implementation of specific pedagogical practices.

Developing Indonesian English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ structural knowledge presents a number of complexities especially in the bilingual context. This study aimed to determine how the structural knowledge patterns of Indonesian EFL students is, and it specifically explored various aspects that make structural knowledge representation difficult. The research also aimed to formulate an accommodative assessment model for the development of students' structural knowledge. Using a case study design, this study involved 120 English literature students (N=120) taking the Psycholinguistics class at one of the tertiary institutions in Malang, Indonesia. The research instruments included essay tests and questionnaires. The research findings showed that students in bilingual contexts have certain diversity and patterns in their structural knowledge. Second, students’ structural knowledge could be influenced by a number of aspects such as topic mastery and the flow of thought. Furthermore, students’ structural knowledge can be accommodated in an adequate evaluation model that measures structural knowledge and critical thinking skills. Further research in the area of content and language assessment will complete the study of the significance of structural knowledge in a bilingual context.

This study aims at exploring the problem of the readiness and competence of new teachers to teach in primary schools. This study specifically focuses on identifying the readiness of new teachers to conduct teaching professionally, and analyzing their competence in conducting teaching. This study employs a mixed-method research design with data collected from two different approaches: a qualitative approach by conducting interviews and observation, and a quantitative approach by conducting a survey. The data were collected from lecturers, graduate teachers working as teachers, graduate teachers working not as teachers, and users of graduate teachers. The results of data collection and analysis were made into several themes. The results showed that the majority of graduates were ready to join the workforce as professional teachers with the risk that they had to accept the lack of welfare and legitimacy as unprofessional teachers because they had to attend further professional education programs. The education provided by the lecturers during their study in their institution in the aspects of knowledge and skills in the field of study and pedagogy became the foundation for new teachers in starting their careers as professional teachers in schools. A good educational process had produced teachers who have competencies with good categories in various aspects.