Teaching is a sacred profession performed by self-sacrificing individuals with high responsibilities who are aware of their roles, have undertaken the task of raising future generations, make easier individuals’ process of becoming citizen in a way to ensure the peace and welfare of the communities, and allow them to learn knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors. By Ataturk’s saying, "Teachers are the most devoted and respectable factors of human society all over the world". In hadiths, the sanctity of teaching is expressed as, "Only those two people are admired enviously: The person who uses up and consumes the goods bestowed by Allah on him in the right way, and the person who properly rules over by the wisdom to him by Allah and who also teaches it to others.” From early childhood to puberty, the person studying in public institutions establishes a spiritual association with his/her teacher. The psychical aspect of teaching is also quite predominant. The role of teaching is sometimes mixed up with the roles of mother, father, sister and brother. There are many students who keep fresh their relationships with teachers for many years although their education and training activities do not continue. Based on these, the starting point of the study is about which characteristics the teacher must have to become an ideal teacher. This study was carried out to determine the characteristics of an ideal teacher in line with the opinions of the participants of the faculty of education and pedagogical training program in a University in Istanbul. The research was carried out in the screening model. The research data were collected through semi-structured interview technique to find out student opinions in a clearer way. The study group of the research was established in accordance with the voluntary basis from among the students from the psychological counseling and guidance department, Turkish teaching department, gifted children teaching department and English teaching department and the students who are enrolled in the pedagogical training certificate program in a University, in Istanbul, in the 2015-2016 academic year. Face to face interviews were conducted with each participant in the researcher's working office for half an hour on an average. At the beginning of the interview, students were asked about their genders and the graduated university, department and faculty. Within the context of the interview, the question of "what are the characteristics of an ideal teacher for you" was posed to participants. The personal and professional characteristics that an ideal teacher should have were determined according to the opinions of teacher candidates. The discussion section was structured by the research findings in the literature, and the study was finalized with suggestions.

Among school psycho-social factors with considerable effect on student outcomes are both school and classroom climate.  Because how students perceive the classroom climate strongly predicts achievement, measuring classroom climate gains importance and the need for testing the existing results across cultures persists.  In this study, we assessed the validity and measurement invariance of the Turkish adaptation of the Student Personal Perception of Classroom Climate Scale (SPPCC) developed in English (US).  Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) and measurement invariance (MI) analyses by sex were performed on 629 students’ data.  CFA results confirmed the factorial structure of the SPPCC.  Results of the MI analyses showed that the SPPCC measures the same construct for females and males in a non-English context.  Latent mean comparisons revealed girls perceived the classroom climate more positively than boys.  We concluded that this study in the Turkish context is a further step in developing evidence of the extent to which SPCC provides psychometrically sound scores.

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 purpose of the current study is to determine pre-service teachers’ opinions about 21st century learner and teacher skills. The study group of the current research is comprised of 391 senior students from an education faculty. As the data collection tool, the 21st century Learner Skills Use Questionnaire and 21st Century Teacher Skills Use Questionnaire were employed. In the analysis of the collected data, frequencies, percentages, arithmetic means, independent samples t-Test, One-Way Anova, Correlation, Mann Whitney-U, Kruskal Wallis techniques were used. The findings of the study revealed that the pre-service teachers’ opinions about 21st century learner and teacher skills vary significantly depending on the variables of gender, department attended, academic achievement, experience of private tutoring and practicum teaching (doing practicum teaching at elementary and secondary schools). As a result, it was concluded that the pre-service teachers are ready for using 21st century learner skills (cognitive skills, autonomous skills, collaboration and flexibility skills, innovativeness skills) and teacher skills (administrative skills, technopedagogical skills, affirmative skills, flexible teaching skills, generative skills). However, it was also found that the pre-service teachers were not able to make enough use of learner and teacher skills during their practicum teaching at schools. Moreover, a positive, medium and significant correlation was found between 21st century learner skills and 21st century teacher skills.

The aim of this research is to examine the effects of creative writing activities on the reading and writing attitudes of fourth grade students. This research is a one-group pretest-posttest design of quantitative research methods. The study population of the study is the fourth grade students who are studying in Sorgun district of Yozgat province in Turkey. Cluster sampling was used in the sampling selection. A total of 35 students are in the sample. Creative writing activities were realized for the students for two months. Mean, standard deviation, paired samples t-test were used in the analysis of the data. As a result of the research, creative writing activities led to an increase in reading, writing and language lesson attitude of elementary school fourth graders. Increase in language lesson attitude is significant. The mean increase in Turkish lesson attitude scores was .39 with a 95% confidence interval ranging from 3.43 to 3.82. The effect size statistic (r=.32) indicated a medium effect size.

This research aims to examine the current situation of multicultural education in elementary schools. Therefore, the views of the classroom teachers on multicultural education have been examined and multicultural education activities have been observed in the classes. Having a case study research method which is considered as one of the qualitative research designs, the study hosts a total of 15 classroom teachers who worked in the province of Elazig during the 2016 and 2017 academic year. The maximum variation sampling method has been used in the research. The research has employed semi-structured interview and observation forms. The research data has been analyzed through content analysis. Research results have revealed that most of the teachers perceive multicultural education as education presented to the individuals with different ethnic identities. Teachers' perceptions towards multicultural education have been identified to be similar in terms of their gender, seniority and educational status. Teachers mostly do student-centred activities related to multicultural education, use drama and case studies in their classes. While practising multicultural education, teachers mostly encounter with student-related problems. The majority of the people have recommended that parents be trained on the relevant subject. Similar results have emerged in the observations made by the researcher. Based on the research findings, several recommendations have been provided. Primary school curricula should be organized taking multicultural education into consideration, and the problems identified by teachers should be eliminated by those concerned.

This study aimed to explore the relationship between Turkish English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ self-efficacy level and their use of compensatory strategies (CSs). The study further searched into the most and the least frequently used CSs by Turkish EFL learners. The participants of the study were fifty university students enrolled in the department of English Language Teaching at a private university in Istanbul, Turkey.  Results indicated that the level of self-efficacy among Turkish learners of EFL was high. The top two most frequently used CSs by the learners were concluded to be the use of non-verbal signals (i.e., mime, gesture, facial expression) and circumlocution (i.e., describing an object or idea with a definition). In addition, the two least frequently used strategies were word coinage (i.e., creating a non-existent second language word based on a supposed rule) and avoidance (i.e., avoiding a topic, concept, grammatical construction, or phonological element that poses difficulty). The findings also revealed that the participants’ strategy use was not related to their degree of self-confidence.

It can be said that effective development of intercultural sensitivity depends on the regulations and practices in the curriculum. Integrated program implementations are seen as one of the ways of regulation. In the study, a nested integration model was used in a single discipline. In this context, scientific research methods are considered as a discipline, and the achievements of this discipline and intercultural sensitivity development activities are integrated. Understanding different cultures correctly and not being prejudiced are very important for the development of intercultural sensitivity. Scientific research methods course provides students with scientific attitudes and behaviors. In this course, it is thought that students will be able to develop sensitivity by examining different cultures with scientific attitudes and behaviors. In this context, it is aimed to reveal the effectiveness of intercultural sensitization development activities integrated with scientific research methods course gains. The quasi-experimental design with a pretest-posttest and a control group was used in the study. The study group comprised of 86 second-grade students in the English Teacher Training Department. In order to measure the intercultural sensitivities of the students before and after the test procedure, the five-point likert type “Intercultural Sensitivity Scale” developed by Chen and Starosta and adapted to Turkish by Bulduk, Tosun and Ardic was used as data collection tool. It is concluded that the curriculum of scientific research methods integrated with intercultural sensitivity development activities is effective in developing students' intercultural sensitivities.

Self-regulation is an active and constructive process in which students regulate and observe their own behaviour, motivations and cognition by setting their own goals during their learning process. In this study, the aim is to investigate the effects of biology laboratory practices that are supported by self-regulated learning strategies on students’ readiness for self-directed learning and their attitudes towards science experiments in laboratory settings. This study, which was undertaken as a quasi-experimental study in accordance with the pretest-posttest design with a control group, was implemented. Second year students who studied science teaching in the faculty of education at a state university in Konya in the academic year of 2018-2019 made up the sample of this study. There were two groups in the study which were “The Control Group” and “The Experimental Group”. In order to measure the students’ self-directed learning readiness levels, “Scale of Self-Directed Learning Readiness in Laboratory” was used and to measure attitudes towards science experiments “Scale of Attitudes towards Science Experiments” was utilized. Both scales were implemented as pre-tests before the study and as post-tests after the completion of the implementation process. The analysis of the data was conducted via SPSS 18. Independent samples t test was conducted to understand whether biology laboratory practices supported with self-regulated learning strategies have any effect on students’ readiness for self-directed learning and their attitudes towards science experiments in laboratories. According to the findings of the study, biology laboratory practices supported with self-regulated learning strategies were observed to make a significant difference in favour of the experimental group considering their self-directed learning readiness and their attitudes towards science experiments.

The research was conducted to determine the opinions of students (10-11 years) on their engagement to mathematics course. These students are 5th grade students at a secondary school in Turkey. Qualitative research method was used in the research. At the study, designed as case study, a total of seven secondary school students were participated the research. The study group was constituted with “snowball sampling” technique of purposeful sampling methods. The data was collected by a semi-structured interview form. Sixteen-page interviews obtained from the interviews were transferred to the computer. Data analysis was performed in content analysis. Codes were listed as a result of analysis. Common themes were constituted from the codes. As a result of the research, three themes, (cognitive, social and emotional engagement) eleven sub-themes and eighty nine codes were determined. It was seen that the students’ most preferred superficial strategies in terms of cognitive engagement; negative opinions towards group work in terms of social engagement; value given to math course in terms of emotional engagement. Students preferred least getting support sub-theme in terms of cognitive engagement; competitive sub-theme in terms of social engagement; value to the mathematics teacher sub-theme in terms of emotional engagement.

This study aims to analyze whether academics’ organizational cynicism attitudes and levels of organizational identification in the field of sports sciences differ based on certain variables and determine if any relationship exists between these two variables. “Organizational Cynicism Scale” and “Academics’ Organizational Cynicism Scale” were applied to 106 academics as a data collection tool. Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis test were used for nonparametric statistical data analysis. Bonferroni correction was taken into account in order to identify different groups. Spearman order correlation coefficient was calculated in order to identify the correlations among variables. The findings suggest that academics’ organizational cynicism and identification sub-dimensions did not display significant differences in terms of gender, marital status and academic title. However, significant differences were found among some sub-dimensions in terms of sufficiency of institution’s physical facilities, the status of place where the institution is located and financial aid from the institution. Additionally, negative and moderately significant correlations were found between all sub-dimensions of organization cynicism attitude and cognitive/behavioral/affective organizational identification sub-dimensions. It is considered that the present study will make important contributions to educational psychology thanks to its findings.

In Turkey, as in all countries of the world, education is regarded as the sole means of modernization, progress, civilization, productivity, and sustainability of all these things. The aim of the Turkish education system is to raise students with the national, moral and cultural values of the Turkish nation, to educate them as citizens of a social law state, and solve the existing or potential problems that may arise in the future. The most important document that shows how this aim will be achieved in the country is the curriculum. The purpose of this study is to reveal the frequency of the social issues included in the current curriculum at the elementary education level. Within the scope of the study, social issues presented by sociologists were established through e-Delphi panels, coded under seven titles by researchers, those who were thought to bring solutions to these problems were counted by descriptive analysis method in the specific aims, themes and achievements of the curriculum used at elementary level. Results show that curriculum adopted at the elementary education level include mostly issues related to individual life and individualization, socialization, democratic life and democratization while economic issues, and issues related to family, environment and urbanization are emphasized less. These findings are discussed with other research results.

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 aim of this study is to reveal the suggestions of guidance and psychological counseling candidates (GPC) in dealing with math anxiety. The study analysed 50 GPC candidates’ opinions and suggestions on math anxiety. The research study utilized case study method. The participants were asked to respond what kind of studies they would suggest to their clienst in order to overcome math anxiety once they begin to work in their profession. The interviews transcripts were converted into written documents. Content analysis was made on those documents to find GPC candidates’ suggestions and opinions. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the reasons of math anxiety can vary from individual to individual. Therefore, it was emphasized that the studies to determine the causes of math anxiety should be specific for each individual. Then, consultancy service should be formed based on the assessment of reasons that cause anxiety for each person. If the individual's math anxiety is caused by environmental factors such as teachers, families and peers, guidance and psychological counseling services should be offered to these environmental factors.

This research aims to explore secondary school students’ views regarding basic democratic values in terms of several variables. The research has utilized the cross-sectional survey model, which is one of the descriptive survey models. The population of the research consists of secondary school students studying at schools located within the province of Elazig. The research sample holds a total of 440 secondary school students studying at secondary schools located within the province of Elazig during 2016-2017 academic year. The participants have been selected by stratified sampling method. This research has deployed personal information form and basic democratic values as data collection tools. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) have been used during data analysis. Research results have suggested that secondary school students have a “high” level of participation regarding basic democratic values scale. While a significant difference has been identified across the dimensions of the basic democratic values in terms of gender, class level, academic achievement and socio-economic levels of the schools, parents’ educational status is free from any significant difference. Based upon the research findings, various recommendations have been provided. Future studies may be conducted on parents’ views regarding basic democratic values. Basic democratic values adopted by the students studying at schools with different socio-economic levels should be sought through observations.

The purpose of the present study is to determine if high school students' character strengths composed of twenty-four different features, being virtuous including six dimensions and demographic characteristics predict risky behaviors. The participants of the study were 380 students aged between 14-19 years and enrolled in general high schools. The data was collected by using the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Young People and the Risky Behaviors Scale. From the findings, it was determined that the risk of school drop-out score was higher in the ninth grades and the male students had more risky behaviors compared to the their female counterparts. Moreover, it was also determined that the risky behaviors were significantly related to many character strengths. Besides this, as a result of the regression analyses, it was found that the character strengths predicted risky behaviors composed of the areas of anti-social behaviors, use of alcohol/cigarette, eating habits, suicide tendency and school leave at different levels. The findings were discussed within the context of adolescents’ psychological counseling needs and suggestionThe purpose of the present study is to determine if high school students' character strengths composed of twenty-four different strengths, virtues including six dimensions and demographic characteristics predict risky behaviors. The participants of the study were 380 students aged between 14-19 years and enrolled in general high schools. The data was collected by using the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth and the Risky Behaviors Scale. From the findings, it was determined that the risk of school drop-out score was higher in the ninth grades and the male students had more risky behaviors compared to their female counterparts. Moreover, it was also determined that the risky behaviors were significantly related to many character strengths. Besides this, as a result of the regression analyses, it was found that the character strengths predicted risky behaviors composed of the areas of anti-social behaviors, use of alcohol/cigarette, eating habits, suicide tendency and school dropout at different levels. The findings were discussed within the context of adolescents’ psychological counseling needs and suggestions were proposed.

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 purpose of this research is to examine the opinions of bodybuilding sportsmen regarding the use of doping by comparing them with the sportsmen values dimension. The research was carried out with qualitative research pattern, and interview method was used. The study group was consisted of 2 women, 10 men in total of 12 national sportsmen in bodybuilding branch from Turkey. The data were obtained through face to face interviews with bodybuilding sportsmen using the interview form. Then, the data were analyzed through content analysis method. As a result, it was determined that success without doping is difficult in bodybuilding sport, and almost all of the sportsmen use doping in this sports branch, yet doping causes health problems and unfair competition.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate pre-service science teachers’ argumentation skills, attitudes and knowledge levels regarding organ transplantation and donation (OTD). Teachers play a fundamental role in providing information to children/adolescents and could influence their attitudes. Organ transplantation is a life-saving hope for many people, but shortage of organs for transplantation is a universal problem. Having a positive attitude and true knowledge are essential for teachers that affect students’ future attitude toward this topic. The research method was descriptive and cross-sectional. The sample of research was 472 pre-service science teachers, who were sampled by using convenient sampling method and are students of Science Education Department at four different public universities. Data collection instruments were developed by researchers as valid and reliable questionnaire in order to determine the attitudes, knowledge levels and argumentation skills of pre-service teachers regarding OTD. Results observed that the pre-service science teachers' argumentation skills in a socio-scientific subject such as OTD were at a very low level, their attitudes were at a moderate level, and their knowledge level was above the average. Results of the study have shown that graduated high school type and grade level have played important roles in the positive attitudes, high argumentation skills and high knowledge level about organ donation. No significant difference was found in the attitudes and knowledge level of pre-service science teachers toward OTD in terms of gender. The gender only affected the ability of argumentation.

In this study it is aimed to analyze the smartphone addiction, fear of missing out (FoMO), and perceived social and academic competence that predict social media addiction on high school students. Study group consists of 296 (136 females and  160 males) high school students studying in Anatolian High Schools and Vocational High School in Mersin during the 2017-2018 academic year. Simple random sampling was used. In the study, descriptive survey method was used. As data collection tools, Personal Information Form, Social Media Addiction Scale, Smartphone Addiction Scale, Fear of Missing Out Scale (FoMO), Perceived Competence Scale developed by Ozer et al. were used. In analyses of data, regression was used. According to stepwise regression analysis, smartphone addiction (β = .34), fear of missing out (β = .26) and perceived academic competence (β = -.12) predict social media addiction level on high school students. As the result of the study, smartphone addiction, fear of missing out, and perceived academic competence predict social media addiction on high school students. When the smartphone addiction level and fear of missing out decrease, and also perceived academic competence improve, students’ smartphone addiction levels reduce.