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.

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.

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.

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.

This study presented a secondary analysis of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) dataset. The paper explored the differences between fourth grade reading scores by examining (1) how often the fourth graders discuss their school work at home with family and (2) how often the fourth graders discuss what they were reading with friends. The results by NAEP Data Explorer indicate that the average scale score (M=214, SD=36) of students who report “never or hardly ever” talking about studies at home was significantly (p <0.001) lower than all other groups. The results of how often they talked to their friends about what they were reading were mixed: Students reporting talk with friends once or twice a month (M=228, SD=35) had significantly (p<0.001) higher average scale scores than those in the never or hardly ever and almost every day groups and slightly lower than those talking once or twice a week.

This qualitative study was designed to introduce STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) activities to pre-service science teachers and identify their views about STEM materials. In this context, a competition was organized with 42 pre-service science teachers (13 male- 29 female) who took Instructional Technologies and Material Development course in Elementary Science Education Department in Siirt University. The competition consisted of 5 categories: balloon powered car, mousetrap car, water rocket, spaghetti bridge 1 (durability) and spaghetti bridge 2 (visuality). Structured interview form developed by researchers was used as data collection instrument. The results were analyzed with the conventional content analysis. Results indicated that participants (especially females) are more willing to use STEM materials in their future teaching life. Participants mostly believe that STEM materials facilitate learning, enhance retention and increase self-confidence. However, there are also pre-service science teachers who believe that preparation of STEM materials is difficult, takes too much time and not appropriate to students’ levels.

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 this research, it was aimed to determine the views of mathematics teacher candidates about the technological tools that can be used in mathematics lessons. The research was conducted through qualitative research methodology. 120 teacher candidates who were educated in the mathematics teacher education program in Dicle University Ziya Gokalp Education Faculty took part to the research. The data of the study were collected through semi-structured interviews. The data collection tool used in the study is an interview form developed by the researcher, and it consists of open-ended questions. In the analysis of the data, descriptive analyses were used. As a result of the data analysis obtained from the research, it was determined that teacher candidates responded as “computer/computer software” at most for the questions about what technological tools could be used in mathematics lessons, what technological tools they would use when they were teachers, and which technological tools would be beneficial. In addition, teacher candidates stated that there were computers at most as technological tools in their faculties and the technological tools in their faculties were mostly used for visualization/concretization the subject.

This study attempts to reveal pre-service teachers’ conceptions, definitions, and understanding of quadrilaterals and their internal relationships in terms of personal and formal figural concepts via case of the parallelograms. To collect data, an open-ended question was addressed to 27 pre-service mathematics teachers, and clinical interviews were conducted with them. The factors influential on pre-service teachers’ definitions of parallelograms and conceptions regarding internal relationships between quadrilaterals were analyzed. The strongest result involved definitions based on prototype figures and partially seeing internal relationships between quadrilaterals via these definitions. As a different result from what is reported in the literature, it was found that the fact that rectangle remains as a special case of parallelogram in pre-service teachers’ figural concepts leads them not to adopt the hierarchical relationship. The findings suggested that learners were likely to recognize quadrilaterals by a special case of them and prototypical figures, even though they knew the formal definition in general. This led learners to have difficulty in understanding the inclusion relations of quadrilaterals.

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.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of learning activities based on argumentation about “Force and Motion” unit on conceptual understanding and views about establishing thinking friendly classroom environment of 7th graders. The study was conducted with total 39 students (20 students in experimental group and 19 students in control group) in a secondary school. The experimental group received learning activities based on argumentation while the control group received regular science learning depending on the current science curriculum for over five week period. Both groups were given Force and Motion Concept Test and Thinking Friendly Classroom Scale before and after the instruction. Besides, six students from the experimental group were interviewed after the instruction about conceptual understanding and thinking friendly classroom features by a form developed by the researchers. The results showed that there isn’t a significant difference between conceptual understandings of experimental and control group students. Besides, it was found that there is a significant difference between thinking friendly classroom scale of experimental and control group students in favor of experimental group. Moreover, the results of the interviews conducted with six of experimental group indicated that they feel themselves in thinking friendly classrooms and with a fine conceptual understandings are fine although they have some misconceptions.

This study aims to review the impact of the interactive story reading method on 48-72 month children’s vocabulary based on receptive and expressive language. The study group is 52 children in the 48-72 months age group at the nurseries of primary schools at Ankara province. The research employed a combined pattern analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data. The data were collected via "General Information Form" ,"Expressive and Receptive Language Test in Turkish (TIFALDI)" developed under the leadership of Gul Guven and Berument The "Teacher Observation Form", the "Teacher Interview Form" and the "Family Interview Form". In conclusion of the study, a significant difference in favor of the experiment group in the posttest was observed with respect to average posttest scores of experiment and control groups, following the implementation of the Interactive Story Reading Program. The comparison of the follow-up test and pretest score averages revealed a significantly high value in favor of the total for the follow-up test for the children in the experiment group. The agreement among the forms filled out by two observers with reference to the results of the observation and video analysis regarding the implementation of the "Interactive Story Reading Method" by the teachers, was assessed to be good/very good agreement. In the light of these results it can be said that the interactive story reading method have a fundamental impact on receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge of 48-72 months old children.

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.

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.

One of the important aspects that increase the efficiency of learning is well trained teacher. Besides, increasing quality and ensuring permanent learning is undoubtedly dependent on teacher’s effort to achieve these and active participation of student in the teaching process more actively and willingly. This study was conducted to review the views of teacher candidates for the practices they performed at relevant schools in the scope of teaching practice. In the study, it was aimed to determine what teachers have carried out for the teaching process to be more qualified. In the study, six open-ended questions were asked to 26 teacher candidates, working at central district of Tokat province during the spring semester of 2015-2016 academic year, received pedagogical formation, agreed voluntarily respond to the information on the form in pre-interview. The study conducted qualitatively. In the analysis of the data, descriptive analysis technique from qualitative data analysis techniques was used. According to findings, it is seen that participants experienced various problems during teaching practice. The participants found short haul and temporary solutions that they usually developed by themselves to overcome their problems that they experienced. The majority of the participants expressed   that they benefited from teaching practice course in the topics of lecturing, addressing, recognizing students, communicating with students, classroom management and attracting attention. The majority of the participants stated that teaching practice satisfied their expectations from this practice. It was found that the participants didn’t have enough knowledge about the practice itself, so their expectations from this practice was low. The fact that participants' expectations were low and they didn’t have enough knowledge about the practice shows that the practice in question satisfied their expectations easier and faster. Regarding the participants' expectations about how teaching practice should be and what it should include; they expect  for   teaching staff and practice teacher to   get  more involved with participants   and course; the lesson plans to be more planned and functional, the communication of instructors, and practice teachers at school to be better.

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 study was conducted within the scope of the General Biology Laboratory II course, which was taught in the Science Teaching Department in the Spring semester of the 2016-2017 academic year. The study group consisted of 40 teacher candidates in their second year in the Science Teaching Department at a state university in Konya. The purpose of the study, in which case study design was used, was to determine the views of teacher candidates concerning the V diagrams used in the General Biology Laboratory II course. To this end, experiments were conducted for a period of 10 weeks and reports for the experiments were formed by the teacher candidates in the form of V diagrams. The views of the teacher candidates regarding V diagrams were collected through open-ended questions and analyzed via content analysis.

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 aim of this study was to explore the degree to which a professional development (PD) program designed using GeoGebra influences a group of Turkish middle school teachers’ beliefs in relation to mathematics and role of GeoGebra in mathematics education. In order to collect the required data, the PD course was established to provide six teachers with an opportunity to obtain practical experiences with and necessary knowledge about the use of GeoGebra in mathematics education. In this context, a multiple case study approach was utilized, in which mathematics teachers were observed and interviewed using a variety of procedures to expose qualitative data about their beliefs and the dynamics of their beliefs changes during the course. The main findings illustrated that teachers’ beliefs were transformed to some extent in favour of the use of GeoGebra, as well as using constructivist ideas in their mathematics teaching and learning can be attained through the GeoGebra based PD course. In fact, the relationship amongst stated beliefs and intended teaching practice is complex and the social issues were very influential on teachers’ pedagogical decisions. This research also introduces some suggestions for researchers who focus on professional development of mathematics teachers relative to their beliefs..