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

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

The main objective of this study is to examine the attitudes of preschool teacher candidates and teacher candidates in other branches towards scientific research in terms of some variables. Survey method was used. The study group consists of 547 teacher candidates studying in education faculty of a private university in the spring term of 2015-2016 in Istanbul province. Personal Information Form, Scale of Attitude towards Scientific Research were used as data collection tool. According to the results; Preschool teacher candidates’ levels of reluctance to help researchers and negative attitudes towards research are lower when compared to Turkish language teacher candidates. Preschool teacher candidates’ positive attitudes towards researchs and researchers are higher when compared to Turkish language teacher candidates. Guidence and psychological counselor candidates’ negative attitudes towards research are lower when compared to Turkish language teacher candidates. The levels of reluctance to help researchers of male teacher candidates are higher when compared to female teacher candidates. Negative attitudes towards research of the teacher candidates who do not take the course of scientific research methods are higher when compared to the teacher candidates who take the research methods course. The teacher candidates’ attitudes towards research do not vary by age, grade level and the academic success average.

The purpose of this study is to understand in an exploratory way pupils´ perception of science and the image of scientists at primary and secondary school levels. Data was collected by means of a survey questionnaire and a drawing representing pupils´ depiction what scientists do during their working hours. A questionnaire anchored on a Likert scale was filled by 204 primary and 229 secondary school children. Pupils from this sample considered science classes enjoyable, helped to understand issues covered by media, that science is a body of knowledge whose goal is to make life more comfortable to people. A total of 433 drawings were collected at 3 urban and 1 rural schools. Drawings illustrated scientists in scientific activity, mainly working alone, wearing lab coat and eyeglasses. Scientific specialization included chemists, biologists and a few technologist and astronomers. Educational implications are discussed.

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is a model that explains how teachers use technology more effectively in the context of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge. Teachers' TPACK competencies play great importance in this regard. Lesson study has also been playing significant roles in the development of teachers' professional trainings. When the researches on TPACK and lesson study have been analyzed, the research is expected to provide significant contributions to the literature. This study aims to present reflections from a lesson study practice that carried out to urge techno-pedagogical competencies of the secondary school mathematics teachers and to reveal the development of teachers’ progress. The study used case study method, and it was conducted with three in-service teachers. The research data were collected through semi-structured interviews, voice recorder, and observation notes. To analyze the collected data, descriptive analysis method was used. The results have revealed that teachers have made much more progress in designing, implementing, and problem solving in terms of TPACK competencies. It has also been determined that teachers’ development of openness to the innovations was limited. This limitation appeared to emerge as a result of teachers’ time anxiety and insufficient knowledge regarding the use of technology.

In order to reflect the integration of the teachers’ content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and technology usage skills to the class context and to provide the expected outputs for the program's purposes, it is needed to be revealed the different dimensions of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK). In this study, it was aimed to investigate the teacher training programmes related to pre-service science teachers’ TPACK. This study was designed as a cross-sectional study. In the 2015-2016 academic year, a total of 269 pre-service teachers (73 of them from 1st grade, 73 of them from 2nd grade, 87 of them from 3rd and 36 of them from 4th grade students) attending Science Education Department participated in this study. As a data collection tool, 7 subscales of “Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Scale of Pre-Service Teachers”; namely, technology knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge, technological pedagogical knowledge, technological content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and technological pedagogical content knowledge were used. According to the results, as the class level of pre-service teacher increases, their level of technological pedagogical content knowledge increases as well. Moreover, there is a significant difference on behalf of pre-service teachers at the 1st grade in all dimensions of technological pedagogical content knowledge scale.

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

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

The purpose of the study is to develop a valid and reliable scale to measure the teachers’ levels of student-centered education practices. The Exploratory Factor Analysis sample included a total of 426 teachers and the Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the scale was conducted on a total of 160 teachers working in the province of Duzce during the spring term of 2014-2015 education year. Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed to test the construct validity of the scale and the model was tested through the Confirmatory Factor Analysis. For the reliability, Cronbach’s Alpha internal coefficient was calculated and item analysis was performed based on the corrected item total correlation. The final form of the scale included 32 items and one dimension. These 32 items explained 40.04% of the total variance. The results of the item total correlation analysis indicated that none of the item was below 0.30 and the lowest item correlation coefficient was 0.51. Cronbach’s Alpha was found to be 0.95 for the internal consistency of the scale. The reliability and validity results for the Student-Centered Education Scale suggest that this scale is a reliable and valid tool to measure the levels of student-centered educational practices among teachers.

This study is a departure from discussions on why community college students do not transfer in large numbers, but instead, provides an analysis of Latino students from community college who have successfully transferred to Tier 1 universities. The conceptual framework included student engagement theory (Kuh, 2003), the support for student autonomy (Koestner et al., 2015), and the importance of students studying to mastery (Sarwat & Irshad, 2012).  These theories were applied to the central research question, ‘What strategies do Latino students from a community college use to create a successful transition from community college to Tier 1 colleges and universities?’ The researcher generated six themes on how Latino students experienced successful transfer: institutional support, student transfer experiences, strategies to adapt, financial support, studying to mastery, and family support as major factors for academic success.   These findings would be significant to student development specialists in community colleges.  Further, such findings can be used to support Latino community college students as they sought transfer to four-year colleges and universities.

This article deals with the problem of student dropout during the first year in a higher education institution. To date, no model on a budget has been developed and tested to prevent dropout among Engineering Students. This case study was conducted among first-year students taking evening classes in two practical engineering colleges in Israel. There are three dimensions of the dropout reduction model: social support, institutional support and personal commitment. The results of the intervention had a positive effect on all three dimensions.

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.

Effective school administrators and teachers are those who provide the least restrictive learning environments for all students. The main goal of this study was to analyze the effects of inclusive science education on the general education population of middle school students’ scientific conceptual understandings. The study was designed as a quasi-experimental model and conducted in a middle school in a large urban school district in Midwestern US. Approximately 4% of students in the school were receiving special education services. The participants in the study were selected through non-random selection. The participants of this study included 20 students without disabilities in each classroom with a total number of 120 students from a total of six different middle school classrooms. The study included two classrooms (one inclusive and one non-inclusive) for each grade level (6, 7, and 8). The conceptual change of students without disabilities was measured using the Density Assessment, which included 20 multiple choice questions. SPSS program was used for data analyses. Paired samples t-test and a multivariate group analysis test were conducted to investigate significant differences on students’ conceptual understandings. The findings showed that the effect of inclusive education was significant and positive on the conceptual understanding of students without disabilities in inclusive science classrooms.

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

The purpose of this research is to investigate teacher candidates’ perceptions about the physical dimension of classroom management.  A hundred two 3rd year students at the Primary School Education Department of a state university were instructed to visit a primary school and to observe a classroom in terms of its physical dimensions. The students were guided both to tell about the actual classroom they observed and to tell about their dream classroom. Thus, this study aims to discover students’ perception on actual classroom and their construction of dream classroom in terms of physical characteristics. The research findings revealed that most of the teacher candidates mentioned their dream classroom according to the actual classroom and only one third of them designed the classroom according to their own dream classroom characteristics. Also teacher candidates did not mention the affective influences of physical layouts and environments on individuals.

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.

Analysis of principles knowledge representation in information systems led to the necessity of improving the structuring knowledge. It is caused by the development of software component and new possibilities of information technologies. The article combines methodological aspects of structuring knowledge and effective usage of information resources which are designed for the scientific and methodological study of practical recommendations in Digital learning implementation. It is shown at the paper that one of the most important problems, which face the processing of knowledge or construction systems, is knowledge representation. The main idea of the paper is increasing the efficiency at the university learning process on the basis of a possible applications and rational structuring knowledge. The proposed concept of using information resources of Digital Learning is based on the idea of using the principles of abstraction, encapsulation, modularity, hierarchy, typing, concurrency preservation and implementation in such stages of this process as algorithmic support of knowledge structuring and structured transfer of knowledge to students. The topic of the article is unique as we try to see Digital learning in multidisciplinary aspects: education, mathematics, statistics. The article combines a theoretical approach to structuring knowledge that is based on the integrated usage of fuzzy semantic network, theory of predicates, Boolean functions, theory of complexity of network structures and practical aspects and ways of construction Digital Learning Systems at the University.

The educative project MelArete proposes an interpretation of ethical education: a form of Education to Virtue Ethics in the light of the philosophy of care. Starting from the ontological assumption that care is prime in life and without it the human being cannot flourish in his/her humanity, the project is based on an interpretation of the pedagogy of care. Since the practice of care reveals to have an ethical core and that core is made of ways of being-with-the-others, the pedagogical theory of MelArete states that in order to develop a project that is in relationship with the core of life we must educate to care. Therefore, educating to care means educating to virtues. On this basis MelArete proposes activities with the aim to guide children’s attention to the concepts of care and virtues.  MelArete has its many references in Plato and Aristotle; besides it assumes the distinction of Ricoeur between ethics and morality. In Plato/Socrates (Alcibiades I) ethics is an educational action that allows the others to thrive in their own existential capabilities; moreover, in Aristotle’s (Nicomachean Ethics) ethics searches for eudaimonia, a good quality of life. In our educational project with children, the educative methods are the following: conversations (promoting intersubjective thought), narratives (reading and writing stories about virtues), vignettes and games (stimulating ethical thinking through a playful language) and the “diary of virtues” (promoting a reflecting culture of virtues in everyday life). In this paper we present the theoretical background of the project and a summary of the pedagogical approach and application which we are testing in our research.