Personal connections to agriculture have decreased considerably in Finland during the last few decades due to struc-tural changes in agriculture. In this study, we will elucidate the understanding and conception of agriculture amongst urban pupils who have grown up during the 21st century. The research strategy consists of intervention in form of a farm visit, with pre- and post-assessment. The methods for collecting data were drawings for gaining a diversified un-derstanding of how pupils understand, experience and conceptualise agriculture. The drawings were analysed by visual content analysis. In addition, interviews, analysed by inductive content analysis method, were used to clarify the re-sults. Qualities of farms as authentic learning environments are defined and studied The study revealed that many pupils had irrational conceptions of agriculture before the farm visit (38 %), but decreased significantly after the visit. One of the explaining factors for these irrational conceptions was considered to be the influence of media sources. Farms as educational learning environments were able to correct pupils’ false conceptions. A realistic image of agriculture is of significant value for becoming an aware and responsible consumer as well as choosing a career in agriculture.

The changes and innovations in information and communication technologies influence the economic and social lives of the societies to a great degree. The countries accordingly take new decisions to benefit effectively from these technologies. The new media system scrolling traditional educational paradigms has also required changes in educational systems. Thanks to the new media-equipped education system in which equality of facility and opportunity parallel to world standards is provided and technologic improvement is individualized, a new generation student profile will emerge who has global competitive skill and individual conscious and awareness. The new generation student profile has to carry the skills of problem solving, using the language eloquently, creativity, critical thinking, life-long learning, media, technology and information literacy, social responsibility and teamwork. Notebooks, projectors and internet infrastructure are aimed to provide for the six hundred thousand classes of all the schools in preschools, primary-elementary and high schools to ensure equality of opportunity, amend the technology in schools and make it possible to use more effective use of CT media in teaching-learning process, which will address more senses. The studies on the issue are still continuing. This study is based on qualitative research methods and techniques in which scanning model is used. The actual case has been presented by doing examinations on FATIH project, Turkish education system, teaching strategies used, e-learning and management information systems and a study is executed on teaching strategies of FATIH project in the light of this information.

Research indicates attributes and practices for mentor teachers that can be used for effective mentoring. Universities provide guidelines for preservice teacher (mentee) engagement in schools generally from anecdotal evidence, however, what are desirable attributes and practices for mentees? This qualitative study gathers data from 25 mentor teachers through an extended response questionnaire and audio-recorded focus group discussions about attributes and practices for mentees. Findings showed that desirable attributes for mentees included: enthusiasm, being personable, commitment to children, lifelong learning/love of learning, open/reflective to feedback, develop resilience, and taking responsibility for their learning, while desirable practices included: planned and preparation for teaching, reflective practices; understanding school and university policies, knowing students for differentiated learning, and building a teaching repertoire (e.g. teaching strategies, behaviour management, content knowledge, and questioning skills). Preservice teachers need to consider teachers‟ suggestions on desirable attributes and practices that can help them achieve positive teaching experiences.

Character education is a growing discipline with the deliberate attempt to optimize students’ ethical behavior. The outcome of character education has always been encouraging, solidly, and continually preparing the leaders of tomorrow. The promotion of character education should not just a leap service but has an action plan for practice. In order words, education policy should take the lead to actualize moral education. Taken together, parents, teachers, and administrators as stakeholders, should join this camp to encourage students to manifest those good values in their lives. The outline of this paper is that first the definition of character education is provided. Then, the historical perspective of character education is reviewed. Third, the issue of context in character education is disclosed. The challenge and controversy of implementation of character education is also presented. Finally, the implication and further research are discussed.

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.

Kutadgu Bilig is one of the literal works that shed light on Turk-Islam history and culture. In this study, it is aimed to examine Kutagu Bilig in terms of values that are involved in social studies teaching program.  In research, Kutadgu Bilig work that is written by Yusuf Has Hacip and is adopted to Turkish in today by Silahdaroglu is benefitted as a collect data tool. In data collect period, document analyze technique that is one of the qualitative research methods is used and data is evaluated by descriptive analyze. In result of study, it is reached that justice, giving importance to family unit, responsibility, scientificness and honesty values take place mostly and peace value exists least.

This research reflects neoliberal economic policies by demonstrating the privatization of education in Turkey. The increase in the number of students of private schools and private schools in Turkey along with the relationship between public education investments and household income of education have been explained by using the document analysis technique from qualitative research methods. As in many countries, public education in Turkey has been removed from the basic human rights and commercialized and transformed into a commodity that has been bought and sold. Neoliberal transformation aims to generate a strong and dependent structure that eliminates political and economic freedoms. The documents published by the Ministry of National Education and the Turkish Statistical Institute were obtained from the relevant institutions and the data were analysed. It has been concluded that education has undergone a rapid privatization in Turkey, while investments in public education have decreased rapidly. Also the funds required to be allocated to public schools have been transferred to private schools, and the education rights of the children of poor families have been diminished.

The purpose of this work is to adapt the existing Moral Competency Index (MCI) developed by Lennick and Kiel in a sample of teachers. The validated Turkish version of MCI is based on the item pool of the original MCI with a slight adaptation of the items to fit the context of teacher leadership. The translated form was administered to 773 teachers in Gaziantep city. Exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach’s Alpha and Split-half reliability, and item analysis were performed through SPSS, while the first and second order confirmatory factor analyses were performed through AMOS. Results showed that adapted Turkish form of MCI (Ogretmen Ahlaki Yeterlik Olcegi) is reliable and valid, and the four-dimensional original factorial structure (integrity, responsibility, forgiveness, and compassion) was confirmed and maintained. Finally, multiple regression analyses were performed. Results showed that female teachers have higher levels of moral competencies in the dimensions of integrity and forgiveness. Also, as teachers’ age increases, their general moral competency scores increase in the dimensions of integrity, responsibility, and compassion.

Teacher education programs are often accused of failing to prepare preservice teachers for real life classroom situations. In the case of research on classroom management, the focal point is often classroom teachers and their educational and behavioral goals rather than students’ experiences. This study aims to explore the perspectives of preservice teachers on their attitudes and behaviors in the university classrooms. For this purpose, 40 preservice teachers, who studied in the Early Childhood Education department at a state university in Turkey, were selected. The interview was chosen as the data collection method. The interview questions were based on the questions that Cothran, Kulinna and Garrahy (2003) used in their study with the secondary physical education students. The collected data were analyzed by the constant comparison method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and common themes were constructed through the analytic induction method (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993). In this study, the findings indicated that incompatible behaviors served different functions in teacher education classrooms. The preservice teachers perceived punitive teacher responses to students’ negative behaviors as compelling, ineffective and mostly humiliating practices. The preservice teachers provided three main elements that affect their attitudes, behaviors and experiences in a teacher education classroom. These elements were related to students, teachers, and the context of the classroom. The preservice teachers perceived their positive or negative behaviors mostly as reactions to the behavior of the teacher and the classroom environment.

In the research, it was aimed to teach responsibility to the students, ensure and develop awareness of leadership behavior using a leadership program, and also examine the effectiveness of the Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) model in terms of forming a leadership behavior. The study group consisted of 55 students in high school 1st grade attending Ankara Turkish Volleyball Federation Sports High School. In the study, mixed methods pattern with embedded semi-experimental pretest-posttest control group was used. While a 32-hour leadership program was being applied to the students in the experimental group, the current curriculum was continued to be taught for the students in the control group. As data collection tools, the Personal and Social Responsibility Behavior Scale, the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire, a semi-structured individual interview form, and field notes were used. For findings; descriptive statistics and One-way Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were used in the analysis of quantitative data, and content analysis method was used in the analysis of qualitative data. As a result, the leadership program including 16 lectures delivered during eight weeks was effective in terms of teaching responsibility to the students of Sports High School and forming and developing leadership behaviors.

The purpose of this study is to describe the actions taken by college students to face their future retirement. For this, the test designed by the National Commission for the Protection and Defense of Financial Services Users (CONDUSEF) in Mexico was used, which has items related to financial knowledge, specifically topics about savings, emergency funds and life insurance, among others. The instrument was applied to 60 UPAV college students of different levels, during the school cycle of February-August 2018, in the city of Xalapa, Veracruz; it should be noted that the range of age was older than 21 but younger than 23 years old. The descriptive analysis showed results that lead us to believe that students have emergency funds (53%) but these are used to face unexpected situations (59%); also, students do not have life insurance, which could be concerning in their personal and family life if/when they have to face a present or future illness. Regarding car insurance, most of the respondents stated that they do not own one, besides considering it an unnecessary expense. One of the study limitations was the surveyed population; hence the need to widen this research to encompass more students from such geographical area in order to obtain a wider outlook of said behavior.

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.

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.

The objective of this research is to describe the practice of mindful leadership at the IABS - Plum Village Buddhist Monastery Upper Hamlet, France, looking at the abbot's pattern and role in developing and managing the Institute of Advanced Buddhist Studies and the monastery. This research uses the approach of qualitative research with the method of a single case study. The research data collection uses the techniques of observation, interview, and documentation study. The research procedure used in this research consists of several research steps utilizing the case study method of Robert K. Yin: research planning, research design, research preparation, research data collection, research data analysis, and doing the research report. The research analysis is done by pattern matching. The data validity testing through data source triangulation and technique triangulation. The result of this research shows that mindful leadership can develop the ability to develop compassion and attention without judgment. The study shows that a leader has compassion towards global issues and can accept with openness. A leader who practices mindfulness for a long time can direct towards openness of one’s self to others. The leader can lead with compassion and care and also understand hi members well. The ability to develop this compassion shows the ability to listen without judgment, not blame, and not discriminate.

Despite its well-documented benefits for training a wide range of professionals, including teacher candidates in almost all content areas, the incorporation of service-learning into foreign language teacher education is relatively new, and most research only dealt with narrative accounts of non-work-related charitable activities. Consequently, this study sought to investigate the impact of the 20-hour peer-tutoring project on the teaching beliefs, community service attitudes, personal and professional development of 14 Turkish EFL teacher candidates. A comparison between their pre- and post-service metaphors revealed a conceptual shift not only in their teaching perspectives from the behaviorist to constructivist paradigm for knowledge acquisition, but also in their community partnership approaches from the unidirectional to reciprocal pattern of altruism towards their tutees. The classification of their written reflections into six types of significant learning demonstrated that despite a relatively greater focus on expressing their foundational knowledge and application practices, a more balanced distribution of learning gains was achieved between the two overarching spheres of academic learning and personal growth, when coursework engagement and multimodal reflections were co-implemented. They reported developing effective teacher dispositions, interpersonal skills and social responsibility, valued intrinsic rewards for their contributions to the youth well-being, and also appreciated the informal professional learning opportunities the peer-tutoring service offered, though without establishing their own learning agendas.

The research investigated the effect of socioeconomic status, gender, perceived parental influences, teacher affective support, classroom instruction and previous achievement on students’ attitude towards mathematics. The comparison of these effects was also done between urban and rural school students.  This research employed a cross-sectional quantitative design based on a structural equation modelling approach. The sample consisted of 808 students from ten secondary schools in Sabah, three of which were urban and seven were rural schools. Findings showed positive relationships exist between perceived parental influences (r = .231), teacher affective support (r = .242), classroom instruction (r = .439), and previous achievement (r = .284) with students’ attitude towards mathematics. The multigroup analysis for urban and rural students showed similar results as the whole student group. However, for urban students, classroom instruction (r = 0.352) and previous achievement (r = -0.363) had the greatest impact on attitude towards mathematics. For rural students, the highest impact on attitude towards mathematics was from classroom instruction (r = 0.452) and teacher affective support (r = 0.246). The least impact for both groups was perceived parental influence. This study implied that factors affected students’ attitude towards mathematics in rural and urban secondary students are different

This study aims to examine and describe the effect of the community of inquiry (CoI) learning model and learning styles on students' social skills. The sample used was a student of the faculty of education IAIM Bima Indonesian totaling 114 people, consisting of two experimental groups with 56 students and two control groups were 58 students. The community of inquiry (CoI) learning model was applied in the experimental group whereas the control group applied a cooperative learning model (comparison). This research is a quasi-experiment in which the analysis of prerequisites is applied; normality used the normality QQ plot and homogeneity of variance test used Levene’s test. Research data were analyzed by applying the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The results of show that there are significant differences in the social skills of students who use the community of inquiry (CoI) learning model with cooperative learning model, there are differences in social skills of students in terms of the dimensions of learning styles of visual, auditory and kinesthetic, there is also an interaction between community of inquiry (CoI) learning model and learning styles on students' social skills.

The purpose of this research is to experimentally evaluate how the “flipped classroom” model used to deliver Business English, which is commonly an integral part to the ESP course at tertiary schools of Economics in Ukraine, to the students majoring in Economics fosters students’ critical thinking skills and improved their academic performances and what students’ perceptions of this model are. The learning environment used a multimedia-based textbook entitled “Business skills through English”. This was experimental research which used a mixed-methods approach. Students’ critical thinking skills and academic performance (learning outcomes) were the variables for this study. Placement tests, needs analysis questionnaires, Course Satisfaction Questionnaire, a test to assess the students’ critical thinking skills were used to collect the statistical data. Cronbach Alpha coefficient was applied to interpret the test on critical thinking data and SPSS AMOS statistical package programme was used to analyse the consolidated data. The study found that the “flipped classroom” model used to deliver ESP and Business English to the students majoring in Economics has the potential to provide a better learning experience for the students and teaching experience for the teachers. This model fosters students’ critical thinking skills by involving them in problem-solving-based learning and improves their academic performances by increasing their responsibility for learning results and stimulating them to use different learning styles. Overall, the above model substitutes a teacher-centered with a student-centered approach that engages learners in the true-to-life business world and language environment. In this way, learning Business English and ESP at higher educational institutions in Ukraine is a move from just training memory (memorizing professionalism-related English vocabulary and doing grammar drills) to applying language as a learning medium in the specifically designed vocational contexts.

This study aims to design mathematical literacy instruments that have evidence of content and construct validity and are reliable for use as an Assessment for Learning. The research involved eight experts as instrument validators and 273 eighth-grade students of junior high school in Yogyakarta Province. The results showed that the ten mathematical literacy items developed had the V Aiken coefficient index calculated from 0.781 to 0.906 (> 0.75). The results of adequacy testing of samples with KMO and Bartlett show Chi-Square in the Bartlett test of 608,608, the p-value <0.05 and KMO value of 0.781 (> 0.5). The results of testing of the measurement model with Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) produce a Root Mean Square Error of Approach (RMSEA) value of 0.049 (≤ 0.08), chi-s Square of 33.92 (<2df), the p-value of 0.05004 (≥ 0.05). Nine out of the ten items developed had t-value> 1.96, Standardized Loading Factor (SLF) was greater than the critical limit (> 0.3), and Construct Reliability (CR) of 0.78 (> 0.7). It can be concluded that the developed mathematical literacy instrument can measure what must be measured and nine items significantly reflect the construct or latent variable, as well as the level of consistency of a good score.

This research has the purpose to explore implementation contextual character education in Senior High School in Buli village, East Halmahera Regency, Eastern Indonesia, and Remote Indigenous Community (RIC) role in addressing student behavior to improve education quality in that area. Sources of data from this qualitative research are teachers, students, village leader, and religious leaders Focus of the research: (1) socioeconomic conditions in families who live in the remote areas regarding adolescent character; (2) the influence of mobile phones and the internet; (3) the role of customary leader in the control of norms in adolescents; (4) good habits in schools as an effort to implement the character education program of adolescents in schools. The results of this study are: (1) the economic condition of the family causes the child does not get the quality of attention and quality of time. Parents are preoccupied with working to sustain life, so schools are considered a burden because of school fees; (2) social media causes everyone to access all information in their own way and the lack of social control causes the use of social media to influence the pattern of relations and communication patterns; (3) the role of RIC can be optimal if supported by members who have better education, and awareness to promote education in their village; (4) good habituation can arise if the school implements positive discipline and commitment to carry out character education in accordance with local wisdom and local culture.