AJESI

The purpose of this study was to examine possible factors influencing the selection of Science, Technology, Enginering and Mathematic (STEM) related university study areas according to International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED). According to ISCED, two of the eight education areas are related with STEM: Positive and Natural Science (PNS) and Enginering, Production and Structure (EPS). Because of that these two areas were investigated seperately. Among the factors considered possibly significant were gender, school type, and cumulative grade point average. The respondents in this investigation were 216 high school 11th grade students from four high schools (98 female, 118 male). Data were collected through the use of a survey form used to record demographic information as well as self-reported preferences for these STEM related two fields of university study. The resulting survey data were subjected to a chi-squared test analysis using SPSS 13. According the findings, it was found that except gender, other variables were significant factors to consider for PNS areas. On the the hand except cumulative grade point average other variables were significant factors to consider for EPS areas. These findings were discussed in light of current literature and implications for counseling were offered.

Keywords: Secondary education students, preference of STEM areas, career counseling

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.393870 [PDF]

The present study aimed to explain style of humor as a predictor of self-efficacy among high school principals. The research method was descriptive-correlational and 103 principals were selected with stratified random sampling proportionate to size. Data was collected from two questionnaires; Martin’s humor style and Tschannen-Moran and Gareis’s Self-Efficacy Questionnaire. Validity of the questionnaire was estimated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient that determined 0.80 and 0.74, for content and reliability respectively. Analysis of research data was done by Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Stepwise Regression Analysis. The results showed that in general, there wasn’t any statistically significant relationship between humor and self-efficacy. However, there was a significant positive relationship between the effectiveness of principals in management, educational leadership and ethical leadership with affiliative and self-enhancing humor styles and the strongest relationship was observed between promoting humor style with self-efficacy in educational leadership (r = 0.411). Another finding of this study was that the self-enhancing and affiliative humor styles were able to predict 17.7 percent of variance in self-efficacy of the principals.

Keywords: Humor styles, self-efficacy, principals, high school

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.393876 [PDF]

Staring from the question of ‘how much prepared for the changing demographic structure of our school and our class as educators?’, the purpose of this research is to evaluate the educational service provided to the refugee students who are trained in secondary school according to social studies teacher opinions. A thorough investigation is carried out on education as a social group of refugees in the research. This research is a case study model, one of the qualitative research methods. Criteria sampling method, which is one of the purposeful sampling methods, has been adopted in the study group of the study. The criterion is that it provides at least one educational year for the refugee students. In this context, the study group consists of 10 social studies teachers who provide education to the refugees in state secondary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education, which is located in the Altınordu province of Ordu in 2016-2017 educational years. Semi-structured interview technique was used to collect research data. The research data were analyzed by descriptive analysis in accordance with the nature of the qualitative research. According to research findings, the participants think that the content of social studies course was insufficient in terms of adapting refugees in our country, and for other local students to accept refugee students, the main reason for this was stated as language insufficiency, it was also found that the participants thought that it was important to include some topics in social studies curriculum as asylum, refugee rights and freedom, cultural elements that refugees bring in our society. According to the results of the research, it is suggested to organize the social studies curriculum and the course contents considering the refugee status; to take refugee education the in-service trainings so that the social studies teachers can teach such groups, and to provide the refugee students with environments where they can reflect their own cultural elements.

Keywords: Refugee Education, Social Studies Teacher, Case Study

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.393879 [PDF]

For a sustainable environment, the notion of educating the children from the early years regarding the environment is becoming more commonplace. Therefore the subject of environment in the current education system shall be reviewed. Contrary to popular belief, environment do not only consist the natural formations and the importance of built environment and its relation to ecological balance is not fully understood. For this reason, the aim is to improve the current environment education in terms of context and governance and the field studies conducted for this purpose include architecture based environment education events. For this study, the different methods for processing the issue of environment in lessons are reviewed and consisted 65 students, 30 being the experiment group, that are in 4th grade in 2 different schools. The quantitative and qualitative research methods are used in tandem. As the results of the study is reviewed, it is seen that the students who participated to the workshop have become more knowledgeable in terms of “environment, ecology and sustainability” and are able to apply their knowledge by constructing models. Based on these results, the studies that will be conducted in the future regarding environment education, it is recommended that a holistic approach that includes the built environment to be adopted.

Keywords: Ecology, sustainability, built environment, environment education, architecture

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.393883 [PDF]

In this study, it was aimed to determine how secondary school mathematics teachers perceive feedback and to investigate the processes of feedback use. The participants of the study, in which qualitative research methods were used, were 16 secondary school mathematics teachers. The participants were selected by means of purposive sampling. The data of this study was collected through focus group interviews and observations, and descriptive analysis method was used to analyze the data. According to the results of the study, the participants’ perception of feedback is primarily related to the teacher feedback. It was also found out maths teachers that stated opinions about teacher and students’ feedback, did not mention about feedback of peers. In the research, it was identified that feedback concept is mostly used by teachers for correcting, defining, completing, reinforcing, explaining, evaluating, confirming, questioning, giving clue, repetition and motivating. Although participants expressed that they use feedback at every stage of lesson, with observations it was identified that they use feedback mostly at the last stage of lesson to make evaluation whereas they do not generally use feedback at the beginning. When current feedback is examined, it was determined that participants mostly use correcting feedback, questioning feedback, motivating feedback, explaining feedback and confirming feedback respectively. Moreover, it was found out that the participants did not employ a professional approach in choosing which feedback type to use, and that the studies that would raise teachers’ awareness are needed. Hence, it can be suggested that feedback perceptions of maths teachers should be enriched and also their theoretical knowledge of feedback should be strengthened and reflected effectively to practice.

Keywords: Concept of feedback, Perception of feedback, Giving effective feedback, Mathematics education

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.393885 [PDF]

Considering the effects of stress and self-efficacy on teachers, the purpose of this study was twofold; a) to discover the relationship between perceived occupational stress and self-efficacy beliefs of Turkish EFL teachers, and b) to investigate the relationship between teachers’ occupational stress and individual characteristics such as gender, age, year of experience, and educational background. The participants were 84 EFL instructors working at a preparatory school, at a state university in Turkey. Data was collected through the adapted versions of Teacher’s Sense of Efficacy Scale (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001) and Teacher Stress Inventory (Boyle, Borg, Falzon, & Bagglioni, 1995), and a demographic information form developed by the researchers. A correlation analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between occupational stress and teacher self-efficacy. To determine the relationship between occupational stress and teachers’ demographic variables, Independent Sample t-Tests and one-way ANOVA were carried out. The findings indicated that the participants experienced moderate levels of stress, and that there was no statistically significant relationship between teacher self-efficacy and occupational stress. Individual variables also revealed no significant effect on teacher stress. It was concluded that the administrative policies and teaching environment have an effect on teachers’ stress and that teachers stress and self-efficacy are context specific.

Keywords: Teacher Stress, Teacher Self-efficacy, Individual characteristics

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.393945 [PDF]

This study aims to provide a model used by Anadolu University School of Foreign Languages, Modern Languages Department in order to implement Academic English courses as a result of a curriculum renewal project which started in the 2014-2015 Academic Year. The curriculum renewal process started after implementing the needs analysis that arose out of the problems experienced in the existing system. After gathering the opinions of the various stakeholders and identifying the needs of the learners regarding learning English at their departments, Academic English lessons were inserted into the programs as elective courses. Academic English lessons were designed to be implemented at 6 different proficiency levels (from A2 to B2+) with varying contents determined considering the needs of the learners according to their academic fields. This paper will explain the curriculum renewal process including how the syllabi, the materials and the evaluation procedures were determined, implemented and revisited based on the feedback gathered from the learners and the teachers. Academic English lessons’ addressing students’ needs revealed increase in the motivation both in the teachers’ and the students’ motivation level as well as facilitating cooperation between language teachers and content teachers.

Keywords: Academic English; curriculum renewal; needs analysis.

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.393946 [PDF]

The aim of this study is to collect and examine teachers’ opinions about classifications based on the Sato Test Theory (STT) and provide feedback on the functioning of the items and the learning situations of the students. For this purpose, a 12-item questionnaire was applied to 70 teachers who were working at different levels in Turkish National Education Ministry schools, online and face-to-face. By following a descriptive method, frequency values and percentages of the responses given by the teachers to each item of the questionnaire were reported. The results show that the vast majority of participating teachers (81.4%) are willing to use the STT. However, it was determined that the participants were satisfied with the feedback provided by STT about the functioning of the test items and the learning situations of the students. In addition, the vast majority of teachers believe that the feedbacks of STT encourages them to build an item pool and facilitates their work at the point of improving teaching. However, it was observed that a significant proportion of the teachers participated in this study had an ambiguity about whether the feedbacks related to the items and the students were sufficient. It is also a remarkable finding that 41.4% of the participants expressed their hesitancy about choosing classical methods for substance analysis.

Keywords: Sato Test Theory, Clasroom Assesment

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.393948 [PDF]

This study aimed to design a face-to-face course using the flipped classroom model and to investigate this course on learners’ academic achievement, their attitudes towards e-learning and their perception of social presence in e-learning environments. It was designed as a pretest/posttest with no control group design. The results indicated that the flipped classroom model has a significant effect on these three different dependent variables. As a consequence, instead of the traditional face-to-face learning model, educators can use the flipped classroom model in which learners are more active and can get more support.

Keywords: flipped classroom, academic achievement, social presence, e-learning attitudes

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.393949 [PDF]