Multimedia settings can be defined as digital settings in which elements with visual, audio or visual-audio characteristics that appeal to individuals’ auditory and visual senses are presented in a combined way. Such settings are employed in numerous fields including movies, advertisements, tourism, commerce and education. The aim of the study is to analyse the effects of social studies education based on multimedia setting on students’ academic achievement. The study was designed using the explanatory sequential design which is part of the mixed method. The major finding of the study is that social studies teaching based on the multimedia setting had much more positive effects on student achievement than traditional teaching, but this effects was not statistically significant. The qualitative findings suggested that the reason for it is related to crowded classroom size, high levels of students’ academical readiness and noise in the classrooms. It is possible to conclude that teaching based on multimedia setting has much more positive effects on academic achievement in contrast to traditional teaching and it makes topics to be learned much more understandable and learning environment much more fun.

The Republic of Turkey became more diverse than ever in its history. Multiculturalism and multicultural education, as part of Turkey’s globalization efforts, may be the most appropriate approach for the Turkish educational system to form a synthesis of cultures and to help diverse groups build an interactive dialog with others regardless of local, national, transnational or international status. This qualitative case study aimed to examine Turkish teachers’ and teacher candidates’ views on and perceptions of multiculturalism and multicultural education in the Turkish context. For this study, the researcher gathered data and investigated the perceptions and results of a stand-alone graduate course referred to as MULT-500 Multicultural Education and its effects on teachers’ and teacher candidates’ thoughts, beliefs, understandings, and perceptions. This course is offered at an institution located in the Marmara Region. When referring to this university, the pseudonym Alpha University was used. The data were collected from semi-structured interviews, written documents, focus group interview, classroom observation and fieldnotes. According to the findings, all study participants had an idea of what multiculturalism and multicultural education were before the course. During the course, they improved upon and enhanced their understandings and thoughts; however, they still need to extend their perspectives so as to more fully understand what those concepts mean.

The purpose of this study is to determine the metaphors that the candidate teachers develop about the nuclear power plants in the socio-scientific issues based environmental education class and the justification of these metaphors. The study was constructed on the basis of a qualitative research model and phenomenological (phenomenology) pattern was used. The study was conducted during an academic semester in the environmental education course. The researcher presented to the classroom teacher candidate the positive and negative effects of the socio-scientific situations on the environment, human, development, economy, and health. It was ensured that teacher candidates were able to relate these issues to the subjects of environmental education course, assess the difficulties and discuss them with large group studies. A study for building the metaphors was conducted in the activity carried out for nuclear power plants as the last activity of the implementation process. The research was conducted with 197 classroom teacher candidates and the data were collected through a metaphor questionnaire prepared in a semi-structured form and the content analysis method was used in data analysis. The time period, when teacher candidates experience the metaphors more frequently, their age or they build the metaphors in the interaction with the environment they are living in and they have listed the metaphors as follows; falling in love, internet, getting married, using medication, gun, frenemies, using the phone, bomb, eating desserts, gambling and smoking. When the reasons why the classroom teacher candidates use the metaphors are reviewed, it has been determined that they basically create supportive, opponent and impartial reasons for the nuclear power plants. Nevertheless, the majority of class teacher candidates perceived as a socio-scientific issue towards nuclear power plants and recognized the contradictory circumstances and apprehended the positive and negative characteristics of nuclear power plants in the context of economic and environmental effects. 

The aim of this study is to examine the basic vertical letters with the opinions of the primary school teachers. This research has been done by phenomenology method which is one of the qualitative research methods. Critical sampling and appropriate sampling methods were used in determining the participants. The participants of the study consisted of 111 classroom teachers working in primary schools in Yozgat city center. In the determination of the participants, the service life as a criterion has been determined as at least 10 years. Semi-structured interview form was used as data collection tool. The researcher has prepared a semi-structured interview form called “vertical basic writing letters writing form”. Data were collected in November 2018. 111 class teachers were interviewed with semi-structured interview form. Two types of analysis technique were used for data analysis. Frequency (f) and percentage (%) were used for quantitative data analysis. Content analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. As a result of sdudy, 89% of the teachers think that the capital letter A is appropriate. It is seen that 11% did not approve of the big letter A. The eligibility for capital letter I is 96%. Eligibility for capital letter J is 84%. The eligibility rate for all other capital letters is 100%. The conformity rate of lowercase letters after capital letters was examined. It is seen that the rate of conformity of the lowercase letter is 97%. Eligibility of small letter f is 62%. The rate of compliance with the letter l (lemon) is 65%. Conformity rate of small t is 81%. The compliance rate of all other lowercase letters is 100%.

The current study aims to determine the teachers’ views on trust in high schools. The study group of the research consisted of 138 teachers who served general, Anatolian, and vocational high schools within the borders of city of Van. The researcher developed a semi-structured interview form as a data collection tool. Nine sub-titles were included in relation to the reasons for trust and distrust. Teachers’ responses in the interview form were computerized and their percentages and frequencies were calculated. Each response was numbered and coded and put on the statistics software. Through the statistics software, percentages and frequencies of teacher views in relation to high school type, gender, and seniority were obtained. Teachers stated 604 views in total. 314 of these views were of trust and 290 were of distrust. In relation to trust, teachers mostly stated reasons stemming from administrators and teachers; they mostly stated the reasons stemming from students and parents, in relation to distrust. General and vocational high school teachers stated that they felt reassured when students were respectful and polite whereas Anatolian high school teachers said that they felt reassured when students were admitted through an exam. Both general and Anatolian high school teachers stated that they felt unsafe due to inefficient administrators whereas vocational high school teachers stated that they felt unsafe due to favoritism by administrators.

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the effect of interactive book reading activities on children’s print and phonemic awareness skills. In the current study, the semi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used. The sampling of the study consists of 34 children attending independent kindergartens in the city of Kars. Of these 34 children, 17 were assigned to the experimental group and 17 were assigned to the control group. To the experimental group students, children’s books were read three times a week for eight weeks in total through the interactive books reading method. The control group students; on the other hand, were read books through the traditional book reading method. In the analysis of the collected data, Mann Whitney U Test and for relational measurements, Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test was used. At the end of the study, it was found that the interactive books reading activities had significant effects of the development of the children’s phonemic and print awareness skills.

The existing and further scientific studies about the nature, development and evaluation of mathematical efficacy will direct mathematics teaching. Scientific proofs will provide making improvements, making effective decisions, updating curriculums in mathematics teaching. At this point, it can be stated that national and international scientific meetings have an effective role. International Classroom Teaching Education Symposium (USOS) held in Turkey in the field of elementary teaching education is an important scientific event where the studies conducted about the field are shared with scientists, undergraduates and graduates, and teachers. In this research, it is aimed to evaluate the papers towards mathematics teaching presented within the scope of USOS and published in proceeding book in last five years via descriptive content analysis. Thus, it is considered that contributive information can be presented to the researchers by providing a holistic viewpoint to mathematics teaching in primary school. As a consequence of the research, it has been determined that the number of studies conducted about mathematics teaching has increased in last five years. In terms of publishing language, the studies are in Turkish. The studies were generally conducted by academics and two authors. All of the researches related to mathematics education were conducted by Turkish researchers although USOS is an international scientific event. In terms of research field, it has been seen that the number of the studies done in the field of geometry and examining mathematics and geometry together is quite few. Mostly the studies related to problems and numbers were focused in terms of mathematics subject. In terms of study group/sample, the researches were conducted with elementary students, pre-service elementary teachers and elementary teachers. In terms of research model/pattern, survey and case studies were preferred by a majority. Besides, it has been recognized that the information of research model/pattern was not stated in a majority of researches. As a data collection tool; test, interview form, scale, open-ended question and questionnaire were mostly used. Again in some studies, the information about data collection tool was not given. As data analysis technique, content analysis and predictive statistical techniques were most commonly used. In a majority of the studies, the information about data analysis technique was not given.

This study investigated the concept images of blind students about the polygon concept. For this purpose, four open-ended questions were asked to five blind middle school students. During the interviews, geometric shapes were presented with raised-line materials and blind students were given opportunities to construct geometric shapes with magnetic sticks and micro-balls. Qualitative research techniques applied in grounded theory were used for analyzing documents pictures, which were taken from magnetic geometric shapes that blind students constructed, raised-line materials and researchers’ observation notes and interviews. As a result, it is determined that blind students have more than one concept image for the polygon concept. They scrutinized the polygon concept analytically not with a holistic perspective. They were often conflicted about triangle, rectangle, square, circle and circular region whether or not being a polygon. They also encountered with the difficulties associated with the combination of polygon sides’ endpoints consecutively.

This study examines and explores PSTs’ fears realised during the practicum period. In order to achieve an in-depth understanding, a phenomenological and holistic approach has been adopted. Data were collected from 22 preservice teachers via reports with open-ended questions on a weekly basis during the whole practicum period. 211 reports were analysed through inductive thematic coding. The analysis led to discrimination of twelve different yet interrelated sources of fear. It is argued that PSTs’ fears are learnt and resulted from a perception of threat, uncertainties involved in situations, possibility of deteriorating conditions of the future events and/or anticipatory reflections. The paper also explicates on the protective feature of fear, which is discussed to have a potential to support PSTs’ self-development and professional-preparation.

The purpose of the study is to evaluate the effects of chemistry activities applied in summer science camp on secondary school students. Action research was used in the study as the method. The sample of the study consists of 48 7th grade students who study at elementary school in Çayeli district of Rize province, in Turkey. Each week 24 students participated in the camp, which lasted two weeks. The activities that were carried out are; “The Gases in the Air”, “Sad Tears of the Sky”, “Recycling”, “Let’s Use Soap and Be Clean”, “Soap Foam Fountain”. During the activities, “Chemistry Science Interview Form” including four open-ended questions related to chemistry was applied to the students before and after the activities in the camp. Besides, “Reflective Journals” were used to reveal the participants’ thoughts about the chemistry activities that were applied in the camp. Content analysis was used in analyzing the data collection tools. It was found out that students can use more conceptions and statements on chemistry, and they can associate them with daily life in a better way after the science camp. Also, the findings indicate that chemistry activities which were carried out within the scope of the project contribute to chemistry, and to the students’ interest in this profession.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between solution-focused school leadership and organizational cynicism, organizational commitment and teachers’ job satisfaction.  This study was designed in correlational survey model. The sample group was 246 teachers working in different schools. The sample group was determined by using cluster random sampling method. Data were collected via the four scales: Solution-Focused School Leadership Scale, Organizational Cynicism Scale, Organizational Commitment Scale, and short form of the Minnesota Job Satisfaction Scale. The results show that the teachers perceive a high level solution-focused leadership in the schools. The results also show that teachers have low level organizational cynicism, but high level organizational commitment and job satisfaction. It was found a high level statically significant negative correlations between the teachers’ organizational cynicism and school principals’ solution-focused leadership according to multiple regression analysis results. In addition, a high level statically significant positive correlations were found between the teachers’ organizational commitment and school principals’ solution-focused leadership. Moreover, a high level statically significant positive correlations were found between the teachers’ job satisfaction and school principals’ solution-focused leadership. The results also show that solution-focused leadership scores and organizational commitment scores differ statistically in favor of female teachers.  

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the Epistemological Beliefs and Teaching/Learning Conceptions of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th-grade students in the departments of Physical Education and Sports Teaching, Coaching Education, Sports Management and Recreation Education in the School of Physical Education and Sports in Erciyes University. The research population consists of randomly selected 706 students of the School of Physical Education and Sports. In the study, Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire (Aypay, 2012) and Teaching/Learning Conceptions Questionnaire (Aypay, 2011) were used as data collecting tools. Data obtained through Personal Information Form, Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire and Teaching/Learning Conceptions Questionnaire were statistically analyzed using SPSS 20.0 package program. Candidates’ personal information and inventory total points and factor points were presented by identifying frequency (f) and percentage (%) values. To indicate the relationship between the scores obtained from the questionnaires, Pearson Moment Product Correlation analysis (r) was conducted while multiple regression analysis was performed to determine whether the points are predictive of each other. (β) Consequently, it was found that the Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire subdimensions Learning Process and Learning Effort positively influence the constructivist teaching/learning conceptions of the students of the School of Physical Education and Sports while the subdimensions Learning Process and Certainty of Knowledge positively affect the students' traditional teaching/learning conceptions.  According to these results, it is considered that students will take an active role in the learning process and the constructivist education and training processes will develop and contribute to the new generation constructivist education and training process while performing the teaching profession.