AJESI

The aim of this research is to examine the problems of the foreign primary school students in the education process in Eskişehir and the solutions to these problems with the views of teachers and students. The data of this research, which is a qualitative study, was gathered through student- teacher personal data forms and student- teacher semi-structured interviews. The data as the part of the interviews was conducted in eight primary schools, twenty one primary school teachers and twenty four foreign primary students which are in the Eskişehir city center. Content analysis was used to analyze the data gathered in the study. Within the scope of the obtained data, it was determined that the main-theme educational problems of the foreign students encountered "Language and cultural differences", "Basic language skills", "Understanding," "Expression and comment", "Lagging behind the program" and "Academic failure" sub-themes. According to the data of this research, students unable to understand their teacher and friends, unable to contacting with people, unable to expressing their feelings and opinions and unable to attending to courses and this context student have a lower academic achievement or mostly they failed. The Solutions proposal to the problems of the foreign students in education encountered, “To Students”, “To teachers and the schools”, “To Families” and “To Ministry of Education and the governement” for advice collected under four sub-themes and the themes of these sub-temes were described in detail.

Keywords: Language, foreign students, education process, education problems of the foreign students

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454575 [PDF]

This study aimed to investigate the causes of violence of students from the teachers and principals’ perspective. This study uses a survey method and the sample was consisted of 191 subjects, including 141 teachers and 50 principals respectively, who were selected by simple random and stratified sampling. In order to collect data, a questionnaire consisting of 40 items, with five-point Likert scale was used. Statistical analysis of the data was done through calculating frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, one-sample t-test, and independent-sample t-test, using SPSS version 20. The results showed that all external factors such as family, media, personal characteristics, society, and victimization play an important role in the incidence of violence in students. The role of family and victimization of students in the incidence of this phenomenon is more than any other factors. Internal factors such as the characteristics of teachers, school management and school structure have an influential role in the incidence of violence of students as well. The principal is more effective than other factors in this phenomenon. The results also showed that internal factors of school are more effective than outside factors of the school in the incidence of violence. However, school principals consider external factors to be more effective in the incidence of violence compared with teachers. In this regard, principals consider the following items to be more effective in the incidence of violence: families, victimization, society, personal characteristics, and media, respectively. While teachers, consider the following items to be more effective in the incidence of violence: victimization, family, personal characteristics, society, and media. The findings also showed that women compared to men, considered external factors to have more effect in the violence, while men believed that internal factors are more effective in the incidence of violence in students. It seems that to prevent and control the violence phenomenon, the spread and revival of the social work services at the society level and within schools is necessary and vital.

Keywords: Violence, external factors, internal factors, high school students

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454564 [PDF]

The main purpose of this research is to determine the teacher perceptions about the upright basic script, which were applied in the read-write teaching. In this research, one of the qualitative research methods, the phenomenological research design was used. The working group of this research, consists of form teachers who are working at primary schools attached to the center in Diyarbakır, Batman, Siirt, Bitlis and Van and are determined according to voluntariness. Semi-structured interview form, developed by researchers and based on expert opinion, were used as data collection tool in the research and a form has be delivered to form teachers, which contains the statement: “The upright basic script resembles …., because…”. The analogies that teachers werw made here were dealt with in five steps by metaphor analysis. These five steps are: (1) decoding and debugging, (2) compiling sample metaphor images, (3) developing a category, (4) providing validity and reliability, (5) transfering data to computer environment. Furthermore, with the interview form, the teachers’ receptions about comparing cursive script and upright basic script and the positive/negative sides of the upright basic script were determined. In the analysis of the data obtained in the research, descriptive and content analysis method were used.The results obtained from the research findings were discussed with supporting research findings and recommendations were presented accordingly.

Keywords: Primary school, script, upright basic script, cursive script

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454652 [PDF]

Identifying how students perceive cultural values is important to train them as good citizens and their socialization. The aim of this study is to identify elementary school students’ perception of cultural values. The study was conducted 6 male and 7 female, totally 13 4th graders studying at Ertugrulgazi Elementary School in the Alpu district of Eskisehir during the spring term of 2014-2015 academic year. Documentary analysis was used to gather data which were later analyzed through inductive analysis. The results revealed that the students’ perceptions about cultural values with 12 themes included: geographical characteristics of Turkey; historical characteristics of Turkey; Turkish cuisine; important values; Turkish family structure; religious festivals; national festivals; traditional ceremonies; folk music, cradlesongs and legends; handycrafts; folk dance and ancestor sports. Based on the results it can be said that they had a positive attitude towards the culture of Turkey and it can also be said that the students were aware cultural values in Turkey.

Keywords: Social studies education, cultural values, elementary education, Turkey, elementary students’ perception

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454568 [PDF]

Inclusion has long been a hotbed for debate in many educational fields but TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). To the best knowledge of the research, few studies, if any, have been conducted on the issue of inclusion in Iran, especially with regard to EFL learners with special needs. To bridge the gap, this study aimed to explore EFL teachers' attitudes and perception towards inclusion of disabled learners in mainstream classes. To this end, a comprehensive survey was conducted to collect data from 254 Iranian EFL teachers, of whom 30 teachers were subsequently interviewed to triangulate the findings. The data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively, with the SPSS Software being employed for the quantitative analysis. Findings indicating nonnegative attitude and perception of Iranian EFL teachers are thoroughly discussed in this paper. The paper also contains the perceived benefits/challenges of inclusion, concerns about inclusive classroom management, implications and recommendations for further research

Keywords: Kapsama, engelli EFL öğrencileri, tutum, algı.

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454570 [PDF]

Recent studies revealed the significance of social support on human functioning and well-being, and also the adverse effect of social constraints and lack of support. Especially after negative life events such as loss of a loved one, individuals search for support and when not found, adaptation becomes problematic. Thus, measuring and monitoring the perceptions of social constraints is important as well as the social support. This study aimed to conduct the initial reliability and validity analyses of the Social Constraints Scale (SCS) in a Turkish population. SCS and Two-Track Bereavement Questionnaire (TTBQ) were administered to 323 bereaved individuals (222 females and 101 males) with a mean age of 35.31 (SD = 14.63). Relational active grieving (RAG) and biopsychosocial functioning subscales of TTBQ were used to test the criterion-related validity of the SCS. Results suggested that SCS had good reliability and validity results, and had significant positive correlations with both RAG and biopsychosocial functioning. Moreover, according to the results, when the bereaved perceive more social constraints, they also have more problems with functioning and maladaptive grieving. Results of the initial construct validity, criterion-related validity and internal consistency tests showed that, the Turkish SCS is a valid and reliable scale.

Keywords: Social Constraints Scale, bereavement, validity, reliability

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454571 [PDF]

This study was conducted to determine Social Studies teachers’ opinions on the effective use of reading skills in teaching Social Studies. The study used a cross-sectional research model with middle school Social Studies teachers in the Çorum District during the 2016-2017 academic year. The study aimed to include all 112 Social Studies teachers in the Çorum District as particpiants, but this goal was not achieved because some teachers did not want to participate, some were not present when the study was carried out, some were working as principals in schools, and some teachers were removed from the study due to their giving dishonest answers to survey questions. As a result, the study was completed with a total of 103 teachers. The study adapted Yildirim’s (2016) “teachers’ beliefs in using reading skills in their teaching fields” survey, and frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean, and standard deviation distributions were calculated in the data analysis. Moreover, the Mann-Whitney U test and the Kruskal-Wallis H test analysis were used to compare multiple variables. Results showed that the arithmetic average of the opinions of Social Studies teachers related to the effective use of reading skills in Social Studies courses was 5.43. This score means that Social Studies teachers’ opinions on the effective usage of reading skills in Social Studies was at the “Agree” level. The study also found that Social Studies teachers’ views on the effective use of reading skills do not vary by sex, years of teaching, major, or the school they attended. The study suggests to increase Social Studies teachers’ subject field reading skills and their beliefs through education. Education should also be offered to prospective teachers in order to increase their subject field reading skills.

Keywords: Social studies, social studies teachers, subject field reading, subject field reading skills

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454580 [PDF]

The aim of this research is to adapt the Public Leadership Scale developed by Tummers and Knies (2015) to Turkish language. As part of the adaptation process of the scale, first, translation studies were carried out from English to Turkish and vice versa. Preliminary application form has been prepared in accordance with the expert opinion by comparing the existing translations in the literature. The forms were applied to a group of teachers to test their comprehension and then the actual practice was started. The results of the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis within the scope of the validity studies of the 178 teachers showed that the original structure had the same structure and validity in the Turkish form. In addition, Anti-image Correlation Matrix values, which are one of the criteria used to decide whether or not each item will stay in factor analysis, showed that it can be found in factor analysis by taking values above expected values. The results of the reliability studies, Cronbach Alpha and item total correlation values, also exceeded the expected values, indicating that the scale is a reliable measurement tool. As a result of the validity and reliability analyzes, it was determined that the scale is a valid and reliable.

Keywords: Public leadership, scale adaptation, validity and reliability.

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454582 [PDF]

The aim of the research is to determine the metaphors of the secondary school students about the concept of justice. The study group consists of 210 students studying in 5th 6th 7th 8th classes(in 2016-17 academic year) in public school in Bekilli which is a district in Denizli. In this research, in which phenomenology from the qualitative research design are used, the form prepared by researchers which is aimed to collect data, consists of filling the sentences like “justice is….. Because…” Legal permissions have been granted before the application. As a result of analysis, it was determined that secondary school students produced 76 metaphors about the concept of justice. The metaphors in the first three ranks are Libra (15%), Human (14%) and Equality (8%). Metaphors produced by students are grouped under 4 different conceptual categories in terms of their commonality. The explanations they used for the metaphors they created in concept categorization were taken into account. According to this findings; 36% of the students see the concept of the justice as equally, 30% of the students see as right and rule, 22% of the students as part of life and 12% of the students see as instrument of punishment. As a result of the research; it is advisable that with the help of social science teachers, some education programs can be carried out t clarify the differences between the concept of justice and equality. On the other hand, doing activity research is advisable to ensure the better teaching of relevant concepts to the researchers. Multidimensional scaling technique may be recommended to determine the similarites and differences of the metaphors of the related concepts and its perceptual comprehension inthe student’s mind.

Keywords: Social studies, values, justice, metaphor.

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454584 [PDF]

There are various steps from pre-school education to higher education in Turkish education system. These steps, which constitute formal education, there are training programs for individuals with special needs. Deaf, blind, mentally retarded and gifted individuals need special education in terms of individual characteristics and educational adequacy. The aim of this research is to examine the postgraduate thesis written on the art education in mental retardation in Turkey. Document review method was used to realize the research. In this context; sixteen postgraduate thesis were reviewed and analyzed according to the research questions. As a result of the research; it was determined that postgraduate thesis related to art education in the mentally retarded were made between the years of 2001-2017 and 11 master and 5 doctorate thesis were found. It is seen that the total number of thesis made in 11 universities and the highest rate (5 thesis) in Gazi University. As a result of the research; it was found that topics covered in the context of art education are grouped under certain headings and similar subjects was studied in the thesis. According to these results, it is suggested to increase the scientific researches at the both master and doctorate level and to provide subject diversity in the thesis.

Keywords: Special education, art education, postgraduate education, mental retardation

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454586 [PDF]

Today, increasing amount of data in all parts of life, make data mining more popular, and high amount of data in increasing complexity demanded to acquits. Different methods developed day by day, for solving problems at many sectors like finance, health, defense, and education, etc., applied to data mining for many social, economical, scientifical issues. In the education area, which both number of instructor and students always increase, for enhancing system performance, it is needed to observe and evaluate the performance of students and instructors and this situation caused to born a new concept: Educational Data Mining (EDM). Researches on this area generally focused on student performance. Thus, it needs to do more researches about instructor performance. A likert type questionnaire dataset which is about opinions of the Gazi University’s student regarding their instructor’s teaching performance is used in this research and different feature reduction; machine learning algorithms are used for evaluating the data set and performances of instructors. Among attribute reduction algorithms that we used, Genetic Algorithm gave the best result. Thus, prediction performance is being increased via using less number of feature. Deep Learning algorithm gave the best performance among the classification algorithms we used. The distinctiveness of this research is combining reduced feature selection with machine learning and ordering instructors’ performance concretely.

Keywords: attribute reduction, feature selection algorithms, educational data mining, performance evaluation, deep learning, decision tree, k-nn.

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454587 [PDF]

This study aims to adapt historical perspective taking (HPT) instrument into Turkish and then to examine history and social studies student teachers’ HPT skills. Adapting a cross-sectional survey model the current study employs 386 history and social studies student teacher attending to related educational programmes at Gazi, Necmettin Erbakan ve Uşak universities in the spring term in 2017-2018 academic year. The study sample was chosen in accordance with random sampling technique. In order to test the structural validity of the HPT Instrument eexploratory and confimatory factor analyses were conducted. Besides, descriptive statistics, t-tests and One-way Anova were conducted. The research findings reveal that the Turkish version of the HPT Instrument is valid and reliable which has a coherent and compatible structure with its original version. The findings also indicate that although there are some differences amongst the groups in regard with several variables, students teachers have sufficient HPT skills. Yapılan incelemeler ayrıca bazı değişkenler açısından gruplar arasında çeşitli farklılıklar olsa da tarih ve sosyal bilgiler öğretmen adaylarının tarihsel bakış açısı edinme becerlerinin yeterli düzeyde olduğunu göstermiştir. Çalışmanın son kısmında bu sonuçlardan hareketle tarihsel bakış açısı edinme becerilerinin ölçülmesinin Türkiye bağlamındaki yer ve önemi tartışılmıştır. Bearing on this result, the current study discusses the place and importance of measuring HPT skills within the Turkish context.

Keywords: historical perspective taking, history education, scale measurement, historical contextualisation, student teachers

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454643 [PDF]

The aim of this study is to investigate the opinions of the teachers working in primary education institutions towards in-service trainings (seminar period). Seventy-five teachers working in elementary and secondary schools in Tepebaşı district of Eskişehir province participated in this research. This qualitative study was designed in the Survey Model. Research data were collected through an open-ended questionnaire and analyzed with the descriptive analysis technique. The themes of the survey data were opinions, activities, expectations, training topics and requests. As a result of the study, it was revealed that in-service trainings were not beneficial but they were beneficial in terms of announcing the changes in the education system. The teachers also stated that the preparations for the next academic year were shared during the in-service trainings, and that activities in terms of research and analysis were held in these trainings. They emphasized that the seminar durations must be shortened, and that the in-service trainings must be carried out practically and separately for each branch with the help of specialists. In addition, the teachers thought that the professional trainings should include the subjects related to students and teachers, the rights of the teachers and the developments related to the teaching. In addition, they wanted these in-service teacher trainings to be easily accessible, and to be done in the province where the teachers live or at social facilities.

Keywords: Primary Education, In-Service Training, Professional Training, Seminar Period

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454646 [PDF]

The purpose of this study is to examine the process of integrating lesson design into the teaching of secondary school mathematics teachers with different professional experiences in the context of the Knowledge Quartet (DBM). In the study the case study design, a qualitative research methods, has been used. The participants of the research are two middle school mathematics teachers working in the schools affiliated to the Turkish Ministry of Education and have professional experiences of 2 and 18 years. In order to examine the content knowledge and content knowledge for teaching of the participants and the process of integrating this knowledge into their teaching, two hours of the lesson were observed and recorded and semi-structured interviews with the teachers were carried out before the observation. In the analysis and interpretation of the data, thematic analysis has been used and the themes have been determined based on the units and codes of the DBM. As a result of the analysis of the data, it has been determined that both teachers is not have sufficient content knowledge about the subject and that the experienced teacher is more successful in the content knowledge for teaching, especially in the questioning. It has been also determined that the experienced teacher can making connection between concepts better during the lesson and the other teacher performs the operation-oriented teaching. In addition, when compared with the less experienced teacher, it has been seen that the experienced teacher considered the contingency that he might encounter during lesson in his lesson plans and revised these plans when necessary.

Keywords: Mathematics education, lesson plan, pedagogical content knowledge, knowledge quartet

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454588 [PDF]

Interact with the universal dimension of fine arts as providing open and distance education and communication as the intersection of two disciplines was expected to resolve the need for such a study. First stage of the project includes three parts such as planning and editing of the research, process and data collection, analysis of the data and reporting. Semi-structured interview was conducted to collect qualitative data. The questions of the interview prepare before interview and researcher was ask different questions during the interview. Participants answered the questions independently. In the analysis of the data, a descriptive analysis technique was used. Researcher was discuss about questions with participants.

Keywords: Open Education Faculty, distance education, art and cultural activities, art education, usability of online media

DOİ : 10.18039/ajesi.454585 [PDF]