The purpose of this study was to assess the correlation and predictive relationship between self-determination and quality of life of college students with disabilities. Subjects were 145 senior college students recruited from northern Taiwan. Subjects' age ranged from 22 to 25 years and their disabilities varied, including visual impairments (n = 16), hearing impairments (n = 17), speech/language impairment (n = 6), physical disabilities (n = 40), specific learning disability (n = 26), emotional and behavior disorders (n = 5), multiple disabilities (n = 4), autism (n = 23), and health impairments (n = 8). Two measures, the Self-Determination Scale for College Students (SDSCS) and WHOQOL-BREF were used to collect data. The subjects completed the SDSCS in their senior year of college, whereas the WHOQOL-BREF data were collected one year after their graduation. The Pearson correlation and stepwise multiple regression analyses were used to assess the correlation between the SDSCS and the WHOQOL-BREF. Results showed that positive correlations were found between self-determination and quality of life. Subjects’ scores on the SDSCS subscales (Self-Realization, Psychological Empowerment, Autonomy) were able to explain between 30.3%-53.2% of the total variance of their scores on the WHOQOL-BREF domains (Psychological, Social Relationships, Environment). The results of this study re-confirmed the positive correlation between self-determination and quality of life of individuals with disabilities. Furthermore, the study highlighted that self-determination not only has an immediate impact on quality of life for people with disabilities, but it seems to have a long-lasting effect. Suggestions and implications are provided.

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.

This research study aims to evaluate the graduate theses and articles conducted on the concept of instructional leadership over the period between 2002 and 2017 in Turkey by means of methodological and statistical analysis techniques. In the study, which is configured by using the case study design as one of the qualitative research methods, the related theses are obtained from the database of the Council of Higher Education Thesis Center in Turkey, whereas the related articles are provided through article archives of the National Academic Network and Google Scholar website. The data collected via the academic publication evaluation form are evaluated by frequency analysis using. In the study, 104 postgraduate theses and 35 articles on instructional leadership are conducted, many of which using scales as data collection tools. Lack of due diligence in validity and reliability studies, selection of mostly teachers for sampling, and usage of descriptive t-test and one-way ANOVA techniques in data analyses are detected. As a result, it is shown that similar studies using similar datasets and the same data collection tools have been carried out on instructional leadership. Mixed research and scale development studies in which qualitative and quantitative methods can be used collocation.

The purpose of the present study is to test a hypothetical model in order to examine the association between students’ sense of classroom belonging along with four other university class-level variables including faculty-student relationships, connected classroom climate referring peer relationships, loneliness and classroom identity. It is intended to draw attention of teacher educators to the importance of creating sense of community at classroom level through this study in order to improve the quality of teacher education. With this aim, pre-service teachers attending the faculty of education were selected as sample of the study (N= 1425). Each measures used in this study was adapted for college-level students through confirmatory factor analysis in order to test specific predictions concerning each measure’s structure and the results revealed that  all measures have adequate psychometric properties. The model examined with structural equation modeling was an excellent fit with the data, and the results indicated that the fitted model explained 50% of the variance in classroom identity; 47% of the variance in sense of classroom belonging; 14% of the variance in classroom climate; and 9% of the variance in loneliness. Results and implications are discussed.

The aim of this study is to examine democracy perception of classroom teachers via metaphor analysis. Study group for research is formed of 253 classroom teachers. “Democracy Metaphors Questionnaire” (DMQ) has been used in collecting data. Content analysis has been used on analysis of qualitative data of research and descriptive statistics have been used on quantitative data. The metaphors that teachers developed with a total 122 metaphor different from one another about democracy are gathered under “Indispensability”, “Equality”, “Social Order”, “Freedom”, “Endeavour”, “Power”, “Variety”, “Progression”, “Conservation”, “Personal Gains” and “Nothingness”. While first three themes under which women teachers gathered being indispensability, equality and endeavour metaphors, men teachers are gathered under indispensability, social order and freedom metaphors. Family environment and upbringing, relations with friends, culture of social environment, political activities in society and news in media tools have been the effective factors in forming democracy perception that the teachers possess.

The major purpose of this study was to create a path analysis model of academic success in a group of university students, which included the variables of academic confidence and psychological capital with a mediator variable - academic coping. 400 undergraduates from Marmara University and Istanbul Commerce University who were in sophomore, junior and senior years participated in the study. The Academic Behavioral Confidence Scale, the Academic Coping Strategies Scale and the Psychological Capital Test Battery composed of the Academic Self-Efficacy Scale, the Life Orientation Test, the Hope Scale and the Resilience Scale were utilized to disclose the predictive roles of these variables on academic success. The results of path analyses showed that academic confidence and psychological capital had pivotal direct and indirect effects on academic success via the mediator variable – academic coping. Academic coping had also a direct influence on academic success.  The findings of the study are essential for telling both vocational counselors and educational psychologists the fact that career interventions for university students should consider the non-cognitive factors on their academic achievements.

A variety of teacher training system was implemented in Turkey until today. One of these systems is pedagogical formation training. The aim of this study was to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the pedagogical formation training according to the opinions of pre-service teachers and the experiences during the pedagogical formation training, to gather information about whether these experiences contributed to their teaching, and to evaluate the place of the pedagogical formation training in teacher employment in the light of this information. The research was carried out using an interview technique of qualitative analysis methods. The study group comprised of 20 pre-service teachers from different undergraduate programs, and they participated in a 14-weekinternship program at a high school in Ankara during the 2017-2018 academic year as a requirement for a training course.  Content analysis method was used for data analysis. As a result of the research, the pre-service teachers stated that they found the internship training in practice schools as useful for future teaching lives, but they did not find the theoretical training given in the classes useful for various reasons. They considered that there are some weak points of the program: the duration of the formation course is short, lessons are late in the evening, classes are crowded, and the teaching staff have negative effects on the students: they are indifferent, and there are almost the same topics in each lesson. This means that they were mostly not satisfied with its overall quality, and so its operability was enough. Like some of the suggestions, it is recommended that duration of the program should be extended to a long period, and the instructors should be selected from those who can give energy to the class, have communication skills, can create discipline in the classroom, and have experience in traditional classroom teaching.

The analyses described in this paper permitted an evaluation of whether capacity-building professional development practices were related to early childhood intervention practitioners’ reported use of capacity-building family-centered practices. This was ascertained by structural equation modeling for two different types of family-centered practices (participatory and relational) where the two models were compared to determine the better fitting model and the sizes of effects for the relationships among the variables in the models. Results provided converging evidence that capacity-building professional development engenders practitioners’ use of capacity-building family-centered practices. Implications for practice are described.

The advent of the new economy brought university reforms to the limelight, and higher education research concentrated on the study of interactions of multi-level, multi-actor policy reforms, to the detriment of studying policy implementation. The ebbing of implementation analysis in the mid-1980s has probably put researchers off following up policies to the point of delivery, resulting in what critics dubbed a 'missing link'. Policymakers more pronounced need to evaluate the impact of the policies they adopt, inter alia, has led to a renewed interest in bottom-up implementation in other public policy fields, but not as much in higher education research. The article builds on a Network Governance-informed approach for studying policy reform in higher education and adapts it to study of policy implementation with a focus on transition systems. Witte's actor-centered new institutional framework is taken as a springboard, and some of its underlying assumptions are reviewed for that purpose, adding insights from public administration literature (NPM) and Lipsky's street-level bureaucracy (SLBy). Ultimately, it proposes a politics-institutions framework to account for the institutional change entailed to the reforms.

A modern teaching method influences both direct and indirect learning achievement through the student's nonacademic factors. The researcher has an intention to examine the influences of new teaching methodology on mathematics achievement towards mathematics attitude, achievement motivation, and self-efficacy of students as mediating variables (n teacher = 117, n student = 2,205). The Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling revealed that attitude towards mathematics is the most important factor in explaining the academic achievement of individual students. It could be explained the variance with achievement motivation and perceived self-efficacy of students by 60.50%. As for the modern teaching method, there was a positive effect on achievement both directly and indirectly through all three factors with statistical significance and explained conjointly about the variance of student achievement in each classroom by 99.00%. This finding suggests the importance and direction of teaching design that covers the development of relevant factors as proposed in discussions and implementations.

This study was conducted to analyze (a) the suitability of National Examination (UN) and national-based school examination (USBN) implementation, which has been running on the current guidelines and efforts to improve students’ achievements, (b) the final examination system that is relevant in measuring student competency achievement based on graduate competence standard. It employed descriptive quantitative evaluation by using CIPP (context, input, process of implementation and product) evaluation model. Participants included the head of the Education and Culture Department, Ministry of Religion, Principals / Madrasas, teachers, and students. To collect the data, questionnaires, interviews, focus group discussions, and documentaries were undertaken. Additionally, the data analysis technique used quantitative and qualitative descriptive statistics. The findings indicate that (1) implementation of the UN and USBN, which has been ongoing, is in accordance with the standard operating procedure (SOP) that has been established by the board of national education standard (BNSP), (2) implementation of UN and USBN can be used to improve performance (3) the final examination system that is able to measure achievement of graduates' competency on certain subjects nationally by referring to the Graduate Competency Standard is computer-based national examination (UNBK). The concluding remarks are an attempt to contribute to the growth of future research in the field of UN and USBN implementation in Indonesia.

This paper endeavors to ascertain the prevailing classroom management styles of instructors as well as the prevailing instructor-student relationship in a Philippine higher education institution. It   employed mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative methods of research to investigate the line of inquiry. A total of thirty faculty members and three-hundred students sampled from the population were the sources of data for the quantitative component of the study while eighteen students were selected as informants for the FGD to gather qualitative data. Findings showed that a great deal of authoritative classroom management style is being adhered by instructors while the students manifested a moderate level of connectedness and anxiety towards the classroom management styles of their instructors. Variables such as civil status, years of teaching experience, and level of educational attainment spelled differences on the classroom management styles instructors. It was uncovered that the different classroom management styles of instructors were attached with positive and negative labels and typifications. Implications of this study will serve as a reference to better prepare classroom managers of 21st-century college classrooms.

In this study, it was aimed to investigate the academic motivations and academic achievements of pre-service visual arts teachers in the Division of Art Education in the Department of Fine Arts in the Faculty of Education in terms of some variables. The study group consisted of 127 (79 female/ 48 male) students in the division of art education. As the data collection tool, the “Academic Motivation Scale (AMS)”, developed by Vallerand et al. and then, translated into Turkish for university students by Karaguven, was used to find out the academic motivations of students, and the personal information form was used to get the personal information of students in the study. In the research, in which the relational screening method was used, the descriptive analysis was applied to determine the motivation levels of pre-service visual arts teachers; independent sampling t-test to compare their average scores according to gender; one-way variance analysis to test according to the class variable, and Pearson Correlation test to determine the relationship between their academic motivation and academic achievement. The findings of the study show that the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of pre-service visual arts teachers are at a good level. It was found that the amotivation levels of pre-service visual arts teachers were at a low level. As the average scores according to gender were investigated, the meaningful difference was encountered in favour of female participants for intrinsic motivations. It was found that the intrinsic motivations of females related to the achievement were higher. An increase, from 1st year to 4th years students, was observed in terms of the academic motivation levels of pre-service visual arts teachers according to the class variable. However, no meaningful difference was encountered between the average scores of the students' academic motivations according to the class variable. It was found that the relationship between academic motivation and academic achievement was low.

Environmental learning in the 21st century requires students to have Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). The purpose of this study was to measure HOTS students using Higher Order Thinking Skills Assessment based on Environmental Problem (HOTS-AEP). The research method used in this study was descriptive method with a total sample of 248 students consisting of Elementary School (ES), Junior High School (JHS), Bachelor Program (BP), and Master Program (MP). The results showed that students overall have a very low HOTS category. HOTS scores scale of 0-100 on ES (22.3) are still higher than JHS (20.2). Whereas at the university level, BP scores (19.9) are lower than MP (21.4). This showed that learning must be oriented towards increasing HOTS through various media development learning, learning materials, learning models, and strategies. This study concludes that the HOTS score of students was still very low and needs to be improved.

The study aims to promote relevant and effective environmental education (EE) through extracurricular clubs. For this, we studied the state of play of environmental activities (EA) carried out by 48 environmental clubs belonging to urban and rural areas of the Regional Academy of Education Fez-Meknes, Morocco. These extracurricular environmental clubs remain so far without formal environmental education programs. In this study, we identified the bulk of programs offered by extracurricular environment clubs, including types of scheduled activities and percentages of achievement and student beneficiaries in urban and rural settings. In addition, we have identified the main barriers to achieving certain environmental activities. The significant correlations detected between some of the variables studied allowed us to better explain the achievements and the weaknesses of these clubs. Finally, we have made recommendations to promote relevant and effective extracurricular environmental education.

Preschool education is fundamental to shape children’s aptitudes and skills in early life. Ecuador is following a global education trend for starting-up mathematical thinking at earlier development ages, but this is only reflected in vehement curricular changes that are not supported properly. As a result, the safeguarding of a good children’s education appears to be lessened. This work aimed to evaluate the mathematics thinking practices in preschools of Pasaje city, Ecuador. The investigation employed a descriptive approach, hence data were collected from 65 teachers and 810 parents from public and private preschools by means of interviews and questionnaire in an attempt define some causes (teacher’s education, children’s socio-economical and family circumstances) that impair the initiation of the numerical, spatial and metric and geometric aptitudes in children. The results showed that not only preschool practices but also the home environment linked to socio-economic status appear to have positive or unfavorable influences on their children’s education.

This study aims to produce e-modules based on valid and appropriate local wisdom in the Central Learning Model at kindergartens in Jambi. The product of this research is realized in the form of an electronic module using 3D Pageflip Professional software to determine the feasibility of e-modules as well as knowing the teacher's response to e-modules based on local wisdom in Central Learning Model at kindergartens in Jambi city. The type of this research is developing research that refers to the ADDIE model. After the e-learning module was created, the e-learning module was validated by the expert. Validation was carried out by two material experts and an e-learning module expert until the e-learning module is declared feasible. After the e-learning module has been validated and revised, a trial was then conducted by the respondent to see the perception results. The developed e-modules are stated in the valid category based on the results of the validation of the e-module material and the e-module design which obtains excellent criteria. The results of the questionnaire perception of 62 respondents (lecturers, teachers and students) on e-modules showed an average rate of 83% which is included in the excellent category. These results indicate that the e-module developed in this study is very feasible to use. E-Modules developed in this study are highly recommended for use by Lecturers, Students, and Teachers in the major of Early Childhood Education.

This study investigates the emotional responses of EFL student teachers to various affective situations during practicum and their coping strategies to enhance positive emotions and reduce negative emotions. Seventy female EFL student teachers participated in this study. To collect quantitative and qualitative data, two instruments were used: an emotional reflective diary and semi-structured interviews. The results of the study revealed that the practicum is an emotionally positive experience. The frequency of occurrence of pleasant affective situations was more than that of unpleasant ones. In the decreasing order of frequency, the most frequent emotional responses were happy, angry, and stressed and the least frequent ones were lost, influential, and shamed. Furthermore, the results indicated that student teachers adopted many regulation strategies to manage their emotions. The study recommends that teacher education programmes increase the focus on teachers’ emotions and training student teachers to manage their emotions to build future professional identities.

Since the 2008/2009 school year, every primary school in Slovenia has had to prepare its own “school moral education plan” and undertake its moral education activities on the basis of this plan. Although the basic content areas of the moral education plan are prescribed by law, the openness of the legal provisions allows schools to exercise professional autonomy. After a decade of the implementation of moral education plans we conducted an empirical quantitative-qualitative study aimed at analysing them in terms of content. The objective was to determine the extent to which the plans include and how they define the prescribed content areas, as well as the extent to which they include and how they define additional content areas that are not prescribed by law but could be included by schools depending on their individual particularities and the specific challenges of their environment. Data were collected through publications on the websites of a representative sample of randomly selected schools and analysed with a specially prepared instrument. The research shows that upgrading moral education activities through the school moral education plan would require (1) reconsideration and upgrading of the concept, (2) continuous state support for the self-evaluation of schools specifically in this area, and (3) support for schools to gain a deeper professional understanding of current moral education challenges and of forming moral education strategies that differ with regard to the content differences in the reasons for individual moral education challenges.

This study aims to examine the English as A Foreign Language Teacher Education Program (EFLTEP)‘s curriculum of one state university in Jambi Province, Indonesia. This research employed a qualitative research design with case study involving 8 participants comprising of 4 beginner teachers and 4 teacher educators. This study used document analysis and interview as its instruments of data collection. The data revealed that beginner teachers perceived they need more practical aspects of pedagogical-related courses than theoretical aspects of teaching. Furthermore, a number of courses were overlapped and need to be redesigned, teaching and learning in large classes seems to be a crucial barrier to the effective implementation of the curriculum in the classroom, and the duration of the EFLTEP to completion is considerably longer than other pre-service teacher education programs. Based on the research findings, several recommendations have been provided. A curriculum should be able to balance the theory and pedagogical skill practice. Teachers, administrative, and other relevant stakeholders should deliberate and design the curriculum together considering other courses or credits to avoid overlapping subjects, eliciting the subjects, and integrated the similar subjects into one would be best choice to optimize the teacher education program, teachers and other stakeholders should allocate much time on Teaching English as Foreign Language (TEFL) practice and classroom management courses. At last, the curriculum should be in line with pre-service teachers’ needs to better prepare them with knowledge and skills for their teaching career in the future.