This paper examines the systems of power in schools and communities and the impact it has on student of color. I explore how the misuse and abuse of power act to shape the consciousness and identity of poor, urban, students of color, and the ways the technology, as an expression of a panopticon technique, acts to shape the phenomenological experience of place for students. Michel Foucault's (1977, 1983) work on power relations along with my personal experiences with the system of power are used to understand students of color's experience in spaces where there is the potential for an imbalance of power.  The paper addresses the moral obligations of educators to be aware of their power in relation to working with marginalized groups. 

The aim of this study was to compare the level of allocation of human rights education issues in social studies textbooks in Turkey and the United States. For this aim, six social studies textbooks from both countries were examined. Textbooks were analyzed in terms of their level of “human rights education issues,” in accordance with Karaman - Kepenekci’s (1999) subcategories. A content analysis method was used to analyze the textbooks. As a result, it was observed that human rights education issues were included more in Turkish social studies textbooks. The study showed that Turkish and United States textbooks contained the “rights” subcategory the most. While the intensity scores of the “democracy,” “freedom,” and “judgment” subcategories were listed the highest in both countries’ textbooks, on the other hand, the intensity scores of the “tolerance” and “peace” subcategories were placed last in the textbooks of both countries.

Although values are closely related to moral psychology, morality is a developmental problem in psychology. However, what the problem is, is to confine to reduce development and maturation to individual psychology.  The fact that social-psychological characteristics of the values have not been emphasized, indicates concerns of the integrity of the development. All of the values in teaching approaches solely employ moral reasoning in schools. This paper articulates why theories of the social psychology, which explain social influence and process as determinants of the behaviour are not used in the context of value education. 

As stated by Joyce L. Epstein (2011: 4) school and family partnerships framework is “a better approach” to the involvement of all subjects of the pedagogical process, i.e. pupils, parents and teachers than its two extreme options, i.e. “waiting for involvement or dictating it.” The fact that school-family partnerships play a crucial role in children’s wellbeing is well documented. Despite the unquestionable fact, though, there is a field of study centered around the dichotomy between the beliefs about the importance of building parent-teacher collaboration declared by teacher educators and novice teachers’ unwillingness to collaborate with parents. In the paper the author refers to her previous study devoted to Preservice teachers’ attitudes related to family involvement in light of their school placement experience (2017). In the small scale (pilot) study it was proved that direct contact with parents during school placements of Type 2 – Communication of Epstein’s six types of parental involvement, correlates with ex-trainee teachers’ high opinions about the importance of parental involvement in supervising learning activities at home (i.e. Type 4 of Epstein’s six types of parental involvement). The current paper further elaborates on the topic and presents results of a study conducted on a larger group of preservice elementary teachers of English and Polish with an attempt to ascertain that above findings. It appears that direct contact with parents during school placements of Type 2 – Communication and Type 3 – Volunteering correlates with trainees’ high opinions about four types of parental involvements, i.e. Type 2 – Communicating, Type 6 – Collaborating with the Community, Type 7 – Parents observing lessons, and Type 8 – Home visits by teachers.

This research aims to explore the relationship between critical thinking skills and democratic attitudes of 4th class primary school students. The research used a relational screening model, which is one of the screening models. The sample consisted of 221 4th class students who were selected by the simple random sampling method. The study has employed the ‘Critical Thinking Scale’ and the ‘Democratic Attitude Scale’. Descriptive statistics, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), Pearson product-moment correlation analysis and simple linear regression analysis were used to analyse the data. The results have revealed that 4th class primary school students have a high level of critical thinking skills and democratic attitudes. No significant difference has been determined between students’ critical thinking skills in terms of gender, while a significant difference has been identified for democratic attitudes in favour of female students. The results also have suggested a medium-level relationship between students' critical thinking skills and their democratic attitudes, and that critical thinking skills significantly predict democratic attitudes.

The term of 21st century skills has become a key concept in the field of education.  It has attracted researchers’ attentions and included in some of the cognitive taxonomies used in the fields of curriculum development and educational assessment. In the 21st century, the teaching curriculum and instruction have started to transform in a way consistent with the change of the targeted competences that an educated person should have. This requires classroom assessment applications to change so that they can be in line with the nature of these competences and support their development. This study discusses the skills that have gained importance in the 21st century education (21st century skills), the interaction between these skills and the classroom assessment, and the transformation of assessment activities to cover these skills. The study also includes one sample assessment activity and rubrics that are developed by the researchers in order to guide teachers how to include these skills in their daily teaching plan and how to assess them. 

The leadership in the field of education is seen as a concept associated with activities, which are carried out, beyond the status. It is an expected situation that the education managers fulfill the leadership roles. However, teachers, one of the most important stakeholders of educational organizations, need to carry out their leadership roles when necessary and to continue their professional development to realize these roles. With the research, the teachers in educational organizations have been evaluated within the scope of leadership roles. In this sense, through the “Teacher Leadership Scale”, it was tried to determine the expectation levels and perception levels regarding the concept of leadership in the existing organizations of teachers. The research was carried out in Manisa Demirci District with primary education teachers and branch teachers working in primary schools. By means of printed forms, the data were collected by reaching 239 teachers among the 315 teachers who worked in the related schools in the academic year of 2017 - 2018. In the analysis of the data, SPSS 23 package program was used. Teachers' expectations and perception levels were analyzed using minimum, maximum, arithmetic mean and standard deviation for each sub – dimension and total data set. Mann Whitney U and Krusskal Wallis Analysis were used to determine whether there was a meaningful difference between the expectation and perception levels according to the gender of the teachers, the teaching branch and professional seniority in the data set without normal distribution. In the analysis of the relationship between expectation and perception, Spearman's Rank – Order Correlation Analysis was used. According to the findings obtained, significant difference was found in favor of the expectation level of the teachers. However, there was no significant difference between expectations and perception levels in terms of gender, teaching branch and professional seniority. There is a "weak" relationship between expectations and perception levels. As a result, there is an expectation among the teachers about the concept of teacher leadership. However, the perception of teacher leadership in the institutions they work is relatively low.

A web-based education system was designed within the scope of a project to ensure the professional development of middle school mathematics teachers. This system was designed in a way to allow teachers to prepare a Hypothetical Learning Trajectory and lesson plan related to the algebra learning content and also to give feedback to these contents prepared. In this study, it was aimed to determine teachers’ opinions about such web-based education system. In line with this aim, at the end of application, semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve mathematics teachers. In this study, phenomenology, one of the qualitative research designs, was adopted, and thematic analysis was used in the analysis of data. Accordingly, six main themes regarding the process taking place from the design stage to the application stage of the web-based education system were specified to determine the opinions of teachers regarding the system. According to the results obtained, it was observed that teachers generally liked the design of the system. When teachers’ opinions about the strengths and weaknesses of the system are examined, the strengths are the facts that it makes teachers prepare lesson plans and that the system enables to revise these lesson plans prepared in line with the reflective questions and feedback received from moderators. Regarding the weak aspect of the system, only one teacher expressed his/her opinion that integrating the theoretical knowledge in the feedback of moderators into the class does not apply to all learning environments. The general opinion of teachers about their satisfaction with the web-based education system is that they are satisfied with the system. They emphasized that teachers get detailed information about certain algebraic concepts and integrate this information into their teaching thanks to expert opinions they receive. Furthermore, it was observed that teachers agree that the system is useful in recognising their own shortcomings and mistakes.

This study compares the writing skills of students with different socioeconomic statuses, using the quantitative research method designs of “survey study” and “causal-comparative study”. The study group included 67 Turkish teachers and a total of 120 eighth-grade students from four different middle schools in the province of Gaziantep, Turkey, and the study was conducted during the 2016–2017 academic year. The socioeconomic status determination survey was applied to the students in order to ascertain their socioeconomic status. The students’ written texts and the teachers’ responses to the questionnaire were used as the study data. The written expression texts were evaluated by two experts according to the written expression evaluation form. NCSS (Number Cruncher Statistical System) 2007 (Kaysville, Utah, USA) software was used to analyze the data. In the analysis of the data, in addition to descriptive statistical methods (mean, standard deviation, median, frequency, ratio, minimum, and maximum values), Mann-Whitney U test was used for the paired comparison of data which did not display a normal distribution. The results revealed there to be a significant difference between the students with high and low socioeconomic status, in favor of the group with high socioeconomic status in terms of the form, content formation, content organization, word choice, and grammar dimensions of the written expressions. The results failed to show a significant difference between the two groups in terms of the students’ skills in “conducting research on the writing subject” and “building a draft of the text to be written” but did show a significant difference in “evaluating their writing”, in favor of the students with high socioeconomic status.

The purpose of this study is to identify the attitude of students of sport high schools and those of other high schools towards physical activities and their levels of satisfaction with life and to examine whether there are differences between these two student groups. In the study, 3 different scales were used on 368 students in total, who were studying in Sivas province in 2017-2018 Educational Year, found by convenience sampling method. The first scale is “the Personal Information Form”, which consists of 8 articles, for identifying the demographical characteristics of the participants; the second scale is “the Cognitive Behavioral Physical Activity Questionnaire (CBPA)”, which was developed by Schembre et al., (2015) and was adapted to Turkish by the validity and reliability study done by Eskiler et al., (2016), for identifying the participants’ attitudes towards physical activities. The third scale is “the Satisfaction with Life Scale”, which was developed by Diener et. al (2002) and prepared as 5-statement 5-point likert type, for identifying the participants’ levels of satisfaction with life. SPSS 25 package software was used in data analysis. The data were reflected as values of percentage, frequency, and average standard deviation. 180 sport high school students and 188 other high school students were participated in the study, when looked at the findings acquired. It was found that the attitude levels of sport high school students towards physical activities are higher than those of other high school students, and in parallel, it was seen that they have higher levels of satisfaction with life. As a result, it can be said that regular physical activity positively increases the individual’s satisfaction with life. Thus, regular physical activity is recommended.

The main aim of this study is to determine questions of 36 to 72-month-old children have about sexuality and to examine the answers given by parents. In the first stage of the study, 84 parents were contacted in order to determine children’s most frequently asked questions on sexual development. In the second stage, top two questions from this list were selected and directed to 80 parents, all of whom were sampled from a separate pool. As a result of this study, it was discovered that children mostly question the physical features of girls and boys, and the pregnancy period. When parents' responses were examined, it was determined that a small portion of the responses were based on scientific grounds and that parents often provided answers based on avoidance-based and religious beliefs. Also, parents' gender, age, number of children, gender of their children, learning status and income do not make any difference.

This study aims to represent metaphoric perceptions of students related to central examination applied in transition to secondary school institutions. Within the study, the phenomenology approach from qualitative research techniques was used. To collect data, a semi-structured interview form developed by researchers was used. Data were collected from four secondary schools, two of which are in Artuklu and the other two of which are in Kızıltepe, Mardin, and from 200 students who will take central examination during 2017-18 school year. In analysing data, the content analysis technique was used. İn the analyses made according to the content analysis, close metaphors were classified separately and thematized with suitable names to contain all metaphors included in the groups. At the end of the study, eight themes were found. These themes are “Stressful and challenging process”, “Milestone in life”, “Uncertainty”, “Victim”, “Hope” “The nature of life”, “Teog Exam (Transition from primary to secondary education)” and “Astonishment”. Among these “Stressful and challenging process”, “Milestone in life”, “Uncertainty”, “Victim”, “Teog Exam (Transition from primary to secondary education)” and “Astonishment” reflect a negative perception. In these themes there are 158 negative metaphors. Only “Hope” and “The nature of life” represent a positive perception with 29 positive metaphors. As a result, it is observed that metaphoric perceptions of students related to the central examination is in general negative, yet perception of few students is positive.  This perception can be seen in metaphors developed related to examinations such as LGS, SBS, Teog, etc. conducted previously for that purpose.

This study aims to evaluate the implementations of cooperative learning method in teaching limit and derivatives and the opinions of prospective teachers and instructors about these implementations. The research is designed as a case study and conducted with 28 prospective teachers (20 female, 8 male) who were attending the course of calculus in the department of science and technology teaching. The data obtained by interviews and observations were analyzed via content analysis. According to results, it was found out that the implementations of cooperative learning method created a positive effect on prospective teachers and made them learn the subjects more easily. On the basis of the results mentioned above, it can be recommended to use the cooperative learning method in teaching the subjects of limit and derivatives in teacher education. This study focused on teaching the subjects of limit and derivative; however ssimilar studies can be carried out with different mathematics topics.

The main purpose of this study is to analyze the change in the affective characteristics (attitudes, interests and self-efficacy beliefs) and communication skills of prospective teachers, and to question what these changes are, how they happened and the reason behind them. This study has been designed longitudinally for this purpose. The study group consists of 28 prospective teachers that were educated under 3 different undergraduate programs. 12 of the prospective teachers studied primary mathematics education while 8 of them studied Turkish and 8 of them studied social sciences. The research’s study group was determined by the maximum variation sampling method. The placement scores of prospective teachers were taken as a basis in order to enable maximum variation. Data was collected from prospective teachers by means of scales and semi-structured interview forms. According to the research’s results, prospective teachers started their teaching education with a high level of affective characteristics and communication skills. It was seen that there was a decrease in the attitude and self-efficacy levels, an increase in the communication skills levels and no change in the interest levels of prospective teacher over time. The results show that there was no significant difference between the first and second measure scores from the participant’s measure instruments. However, in the analyses performed individually, it was seen that some prospective teachers had significant changes in their affective characteristics and communicational skills.

In this qualitative study aiming to identify the opinions of postgraduate students studying in İzmir, Turkey about the schooling practices of Roma children from social justice perspective, case study design was used. The study group included 46 post graduate students. As result of the study, it was identified that most of the participants agreed that the Roma children have limited access to schooling for such reasons as economics, Roma culture and the family structure, exclusion practices towards them, lack of social state and learned desperateness and made some suggestions accordingly. It can be argued that the disadvantaged status of Roma children and the inequities they exposed to manifest themselves as economic, cultural and thus participative injustices in education.  Accordingly, improving the socio-economic conditions of Roma families thus children,   valuing the culture of Roma and including Roma families and children in the education system were recommended.