The primary goal of this research is to explore absenteeism tendency, and the attitudes towards absenteeism and cheating of students who attended the teacher certificate program. In addition, this research aims to identify the views of students and lecturers on cheating and absenteeism. A sequential explanatory mixed-method research design was employed in this research. The sample of the quantitative data was 321 teacher certificate program students studying at Mugla Sitki Kocman University, Turkey. Absenteeism tendency, cheating attitude and absenteeism attitude scales were used to collect the data. Descriptive statistics, correlation, independent t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey HSD tests were used to analyze the data. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interview forms. 14 students and 14 lecturers were interviewed, recorded, and transcribed. Qualitative data was analyzed through quantitative content analyses and descriptive analyses. Research findings show that verbal field students have significantly more positive cheating attitudes than quantitative field students. While cheating attitudes show no significant difference between genders, students in physical education departments have higher scores in the dimensions of environmental conditions and opportunity and ability than verbal and quantitative field students. Both students and lecturers describe cheating as “unfair behavior and plagiarism,” and absenteeism as a “right” in unavoidable situations. It is emphasized that the active participation of students in classes mostly depends on the instructor.

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

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.

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.

The paper is part of the qualitative research project Educational Aspirations, Opportunities and Challenges for Immigrants in University Education in Iceland, conducted in Iceland’s three biggest universities. The main goal of the paper is to investigate immigrant students’ experiences of communication with teachers during the learning process and their perspectives on multicultural group work. Furthermore, the paper explores immigrant students’ experiences of learner-centred approach and culturally responsive teaching methods applied by some teachers. The data was collected through focus group interviews and qualitative, semi-structured individual interviews with immigrant students. The theoretical framework is mainly based on the constructivist theory, which emphasises the importance of communication and the learner-centred approach. Additionally, the theoretical framework includes multicultural education theory, which puts an emphasis on applying culturally responsive teaching methods in classrooms with diverse student populations. The analysis of the interviews revealed that the participants’ experiences of communication with teachers and peers were mostly positive. However, culturally responsive teaching is still a rare phenomenon in Icelandic universities. When it comes to the participants’ perspectives on group work, the experiences ranged from being highly positive to negative.

Achieving the maximum efficiency in teaching a second language (L2) has always been an important issue for educators. Current globalization processes, development of international business relations, political integrations among the various countries throughout the world, and the abilities of latest information and communications technologies (ICT) dictate the more significance of knowledge of foreign languages. All living conditions should be constructed according to the mentioned surrounding changes during the ICT era. Correspondingly, teaching methodologies are also being adapted in order to teach people more efficiently. This paper studies how cellular phones (cell phones) can be used in learning English phrases. In order to examine the impact of cell phones on learning a language an experiment was run among the college and university students in Kazakhstan, supported by GSM Network of KCell (Kazakhstan). This paper discusses the experiment results, in which 126 college and university students participated, and makes some suggestions based on the experimental mobile learning. Study reveals that users could make noticeable improvements learning through their cell phones after the conducted experiment. Positive improvements were noticed on the results of general tests of English language those conducted among all participants of the research.

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 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.

In this study, it was aimed to examine existing condition of parental support taken by pre-service music teachers in instrumental education according to some variables and to determine the relationship between them. 123 students, who study in Uludag University Department of Music Education, constitute the sample of the research. The data collected with “Parental Support Scale Perceived in Instrumental Education” is analyzed with t-test, ANOVA and Mann-Withney U test. The results demonstrated that parental support perceived in instrumental education does not change according to gender, living together/separate status of parents, mother’s working/not working status, income level of parents or students living together/separate with parents’ status. Nevertheless, when the class level increases, the parental support perceived in instrumental education decreases. Also, it is determined that the students who has someone playing musical instrument in their family has higher points for parental support perceived in instrumental education. There was a significant linear trend, indicating that as the education level of mother increased, both the sub-dimensions and total scores of parental support perceived in instrumental education increased proportionately. On the other hand, as the education level of father increased, only the total scores increased proportionately.

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.

Pragmatic competence is an indispensable dimension of overall language ability, and proper interpretation of implied meanings is a major constituent of pragmatic competence. In this regard, this study aimed to investigate the efficiency of a film-based instruction program devised to facilitate the interpretation of implied meanings in English. It was conducted with a quasi-experimental design. First, a multiple-choice discourse completion test was given to 144 English language teacher trainees with 77 people in the experimental group and 67 in the control group. After the 5-week instruction given to the experimental group, the test was administered to both groups again. The results revealed significant differences in favor of the experimental group. This makes the program a promising one as it made the participants, who were also prospective English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers responsible for helping their own students have pragmatic competence too, significantly more equipped about processing implied meanings as a major constituent of pragmatic competence.

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

The aim of this study was to investigate the attitudes of music teacher candidates on computer self-efficacy perceptions and digital technology according to different variables. In this research, correlational survey model is used as a general survey model and also during data collection process of research, criterion sampling is used as purposive sampling.   The focus group of the research consists of 102 students studying music education at Ondokuz Mayis University in the 2018-2019 academic year. Computer Self-Efficacy Perception Scale and Attitude Scale towards Digital Technology Scale were used as data collection tools for the study. According to the results of the study, it was found that there was a significant relationship between the levels of computer self-efficacy perception and the attitudes towards digital technology of the music teacher candidates who participated in the research. The self-efficacy perceptions of the students significantly differed according to their gender, to have a personal computer and the time they first used the computer for educational purpose and their attitudes towards digital technology significantly differed according to their gender, class level and computer ownership.

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.

Conflicts are an inevitable phenomenon within organizations. The organization of interest in this study is the elementary school and the conflicts that may emerge into its context. There are many types of conflicts and their consequences vary; there are positive consequences, but also negatives ones. When teachers are to express their opinions on conflicts, they think that conflicts happen often enough, and they recognize both their negative and positive effects. The present study examined teachers’ perceptions on the frequency of certain types of school conflicts and their consequences. The researchers asked teachers working in public elementary schools in Achaia Prefecture, Greece. Personal characteristics of the study’s participants such as age, gender, years in service and teaching specialization were also taken into consideration. It was found that a small percentage of teachers believed that conflicts happen very often. In general, teachers thought that negative consequences are more frequent than positive ones, even though, they recognized the beneficial aspect of conflicts. Lastly, the teachers’ groups that were formed based on participants’ characteristics showed significant differences. Study’s limitations along with suggestions for future research are also discussed.

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.