The study's goal was to examine the correlation between the computer programming self-efficacy and computational thinking skills of gifted and talented students. The capacity of the computer programming self-efficacy of gifted and talented students to predict their computational thinking skills were also examined. The relational screening model has been implemented in the research. The participants of the study were composed of 106 secondary school gifted and talented students studying the Individual Ability Recognition Program (IAR) at the Science and Art Center in the city center. Typical case sampling was applied for the student identification of the participants, 46 are female and 60 are male. Gifted and talented students' computational thinking skills were assessed using the "Computational Thinking Skills Scale” and the computer programming self-efficacy was measured by using the "Computer Programming Self-Efficacy Scale". Data were analysed by Pearson correlation analysis and simple linear regression analysis in statistical software SPSS 22. Research results found that there was a positive and high correlation between the computer programming self-efficacy and computational thinking skills. The gifted and talented students' computer programming self-efficacy demonstrated 31.5% of the total variance in computational thinking skills. This finding supports the claim which is present in the literature that self-efficacy in computer programming is the affective aspect of computational thinking skills. To predict computational thinking skills, it may be recommended to build multiple models for cognitive and affective skills of gifted and talented students.

Many educators hold beliefs that including students, at least to some degree, has academic and social benefits, however, they struggle with fundamental pedagogy. With a global shift from a segregated lens to that of an inclusive lens, special education teachers who once held positive beliefs towards segregated special education are now faced with a new reality of teaching students with disabilities in inclusive classroom settings. This paper highlights the experiences of ten educators who transitioned from teaching in a self-contained class to an inclusive class. Focus group and interview themes indicated that all had experienced a shift in their pedagogy- their overall beliefs and teaching methods- after they taught students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms. Despite their special education training, these educators were challenged by their own beliefs and expectations, the attitudes of others, and systematic barriers within the education system. Highlights of their change process include the positive performance of students with disabilities, the growth and development of the other students, and their overall pedagogical self-reflection. As a result, a framework, the Inclusive Educators’ Continuum of Change, was developed to highlight the change process and connect this research to the literature on inclusion and teacher change. This diagram can provide teacher educators a framework for discussing pedagogical change. Implications for professional development and teacher training for inclusive practice, as well as maximizing the educator skills in Professional Learning Communities (PLC) and mentorship opportunities will be highlighted.

This paper sought to investigate the mathematics teachers’ reflection on the role of Productive Pedagogies’ framework in festering effective classroom instruction. Two research objectives were used to discuss the reflection of the four mathematic teachers. A qualitative case study was adopted as the design of the study. Classroom observations, Research Journal and Reflective Interviews were organised to collect data for the study, while the narratives approach to data analysis was used to analyse the data collected. From the study, the mathematics teachers were able to gradually adjust to the new framework through effective reflective meetings with their colleagues and with the support of the researcher. They (mathematics teachers) reflected that, the framework helps them developed confidence, positive attitude and interest to their teaching practice. It helped fostered effective collaboration and created an atmosphere of trust between the mathematics teachers and their students. The study also suggested that the pedagogy influence the mathematics teachers to provide and received feedback from their colleagues and from their students. They were also of the view that there was a gradual shift from the traditional teacher centred instruction they are more conversant with to a more student-centred pedagogy. The implication of the study suggests the need to adopt the Productive Pedagogies framework into the Nigerian mathematics classroom to improve mathematics teacher’s classroom instruction.

This study aims to find out the attitude levels of the fourth grade primary school students towards science and to examine these attitudes according to some variables. The study is designed in descriptive survey model to reveal the present situation.  The data were collected through Attitude towards Science Scale, a three-point Likert scale developed by the researchers. A total of 562 students participated in the study. The findings of the study demonstrate that the students' attitudes towards science, which are based on two dimensions including scientific discovery and scientific curiosity, are positive. The students' attitudes towards science do not differ statistically according to their gender. However, their attitudes towards science show statistically significant differences according to whether the students follow a scientific magazine or not, whether they study at a public or private school, whether their mothers are a teacher or not and the educational level of their parents. It is believed that the results will contribute to raising generations with positive attitudes towards science.

The purpose of the current study is to evaluate the undergraduate programs implemented in different Foreign Language Departments on the basis of the pre-service teachers’ opinions by using the “Context-Input-Process-Product (CIPP)” model. The current research was conducted on 40 pre-service teachers from the German, Arabic, French, and English Language Teaching Departments of the Gazi Education Faculty of Gazi University in the city of Ankara in Turkey in 2017-2018 academic year. The study was designed according to the qualitative research model. In this regard, the study employed the phenomenological method. As the data collection tool, a semi-structured interview form developed by the researchers was used. In the analysis of the collected data, the descriptive analysis method was used. In the study, the context, input, process and product dimensions of foreign language teacher training programs were evaluated on the basis of student opinions. According to the results, the participants found the program sufficient in terms of reading, writing and listening skills but inadequate in terms of speaking skill. It seems that the participating students think that the foreign language teaching programs generally meet their needs but do not adequately meet their need for developing their speaking skill. It can be suggested that the class hours devoted to the development of the speaking skill should be increased. Arrangements such as using computer-based programs and increasing speaking lessons can be made for students to improve their speaking skill.

This article examined the role of Lesson Study in a center school located in the southeastern United States through an analysis of a narrative by the school principal. This methodology allowed a level of reflexivity across the research team, who appreciated hearing about the powerful first-hand enactment of the initiative. The paper begins with an analysis of Lesson Study, particularly in special education, and the key tenets of Lesson Study followed by a narrative account of the principal. Subsequent to her story, we explored lessons learned in relation to implementing a system change in a school, namely Lesson Study. We learned that a deeper understanding of school culture, sustaining professional development, and collaborative practice, were significant factors enabling the principal and teachers at the center school to embrace, plan, and implement a successful Lesson Study for learners with significant disabilities. In addition, we learned that Lesson Study plays an important role in teacher and student engagement in teaching and learning at the center school and supports teachers to design lessons that are efficacious in meeting the individual needs and higher expectations of students.

This study aimed to investigate whether Thai high school students’ perceived teacher support could enhance their reading ability through self-efficacy and sense of school belonging. The theoretical foundation of this study included the theory of social-motivational processes and social cognitive theory. Structural equation modeling was used for analysis and validation. The student questionnaire from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 survey questions regarding teacher support, sense of school belonging, self-efficacy, and reading ability. The sample consisted of the data collected from the Thai students in the PISA2018 survey, with an effective sample size totaling 7968. The research results of the overall model showed that the perceived teacher support of Thai high school students’ had no direct effect on their reading ability, but their perceived teacher support had an indirect effect on reading ability through their self-efficacy and sense of school belonging. From the results can be seen that high school teachers in Thailand, in supporting and encouraging their students in learning, must simultaneously develop their perceived self-efficacy and sense of school belonging. Only thus can there be obvious help to their students’ reading ability.

Citizenship is an act of being the ideal member of a society that “maintains and adapts to the culture of this society”, besides having a legal status with the duties and rights that the state imposes on the individual. This study aims to determine the citizenship perceptions of primary school teacher candidates and their ideal citizenship narratives.  The study was carried out according to the mixed research design. Three different measurement tools were used in the research and content analysis method was used for the analysis of data. According to the findings of the study, it was concluded that teacher candidates' perceptions of citizenship and ideal citizenship are similar. Accordingly, it was determined that they participated in the items related to traditional citizenship in the scales, and their perceptions of active/social citizenship were relatively low. It was also determined that all of the teacher candidates mentioned the courses they took during the university process in the differentiation of their ideal citizenship perceptions, and the ideal citizenship narratives were built on traditional citizenship as well as the perceptions of citizenship of the pre-service teachers.

Decline in students’ motivation to learn languages remains a vexing issue for teachers and educators. Among a myriad of factors that affect student motivation, teachers’ practices appear to play a very dominant role. This has been reflected in the rising number of studies that examine teachers’ motivational strategies. This study aims to determine the specific teacher strategies which are most likely to positively affect the motivation of Arab learners of English from the perspective of learners. Some 400 teenage learners of English responded to an open-ended question in which they were asked to freely describe the strategies their teachers used that motivated them to learn. The results of the study suggest that the majority of students prefer strategies that promote communicative uses of the language to ones that focus on grammar or emphasize learning through texts. Many students also reported that they had more interest in studying English when their teachers integrated technology. It is therefore recommended that teachers give more weight to these motivating strategies by incorporating more communicative use of English and more technology into their lessons.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of Personalized Book Advice Smart Application on secondary school students’ motivation as well as determining the views of students, teachers, and parents regarding the application. In the research, a mixed method approach, in which quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis methods are used together, was adopted. In the quantitative part, 585 secondary school students, 300 of whom are in the experimental group and 285 in the control group; In the qualitative part, 105 students, 6 teachers and 247 families were included in the research. Similarly, the qualitative of the study involved 105 students, 6 teachers, and 247 parents. In the quantitative part of the research, data collected with the Reading Motivation Scale developed by Durmus. In the qualitative part, the data were collected through a questionnaire. The quantitative data were analyzed using parametric descriptive statistics, while the qualitative data were analyzed using descriptive analysis technique. According to the findings obtained from the research, there is a significant difference in reading motivation of secondary school students in terms of post-test scores. It is seen that the students like to read adventure books and think that the books proposed by the application are suitable for their interests. Teachers state that they find the application successful, and they like that the application forms reading habits, and recommends books according to their interests, moreover, the recommended books are suitable for the students’ levels. On the other hand, the teachers think that teacher control is necessary. Additionally, parents state that they like the application because it recommends books according to the children’s interests and those recommended books were suitable for their levels, however, they added that the number of the books needs to be increased.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between effective communication skills and verbal intelligence levels of Faculty of Sports Sciences students according to variables such as gender, department, age, academic grade point average (GPA), and way of taking the Effective Communication Skills (ECS) course. The correlational survey model was used in the research. The subjects were 230 volunteer university students, chosen by simple random sampling method. The Multiple Intelligence Areas Inventory and The Effective Communication Skills Scale were used. The result showed that there was a significant difference in favor of female students in terms of effective listening by gender. A significant difference was found in favor of the Recreation Department in terms of self-recognition/self-disclosure, I-language, and verbal intelligence sub-dimensions. A significant difference was found in favor of 21-23 age in self-recognition/self-disclosure sub-dimension by age variable. According to academic GPA, a significant difference was found in the verbal intelligence sub-dimension in favor of those whose academic GPA was 3.15-3.57. In addition, according to way of taking the ECS course, a significant difference was found in favor of the compulsory course in the sub-dimensions of ego supportive language, self-recognition/self-disclosure, and I-language. Besides, it was determined that there is a positive and significant relationship between students' effective communication skills and verbal intelligence levels. As a result, it has been determined that, in terms of the development of communication skills, it is important that the ECS course is included in the curriculum as part of the compulsory course.

Shared leadership enables employees to develop positive feelings for their organizations and themselves. Especially, their devotional feelings and behaviours towards their organizations increase with the sharing of leadership. In this study, the shared leadership of the school and the organizational commitment levels of the teachers, their relationship with each other and the predictive status were examined. This study is a research within relational survey model. The data of the research were collected from 512 teachers in primary and secondary schools in Malatya districts of Turkey in the 2019-2020 academic year. The data were collected through the Shared Leadership Scale and the Organizational Commitment Scale of Teachers. For the analysis of the data, t-test, ANOVA test, correlation and regression analyzes were performed. According to the results of the research, shared leadership and organizational commitment levels in primary and secondary schools are high. There is a positively significant and moderate correlation between the shared leadership of the school and the organizational commitment of teachers. Shared leadership in primary and secondary schools positively and significantly predicts teachers' organizational commitment. For this reason, in order to increase the organizational commitment of teachers; it is important to create a sharing school life, in order to support teachers for the purposes of the organization and to include them in decision-making processes. According to the results obtained, it is recommended that young teachers with lower organizational commitment be given more duties, powers and responsibilities.

This study explores the impact extended participation in literature circles had on the reading attitudes of university-age pre-service teachers following their involvement in literature circles for one academic year, as part of their training. The participants of the study consisted of 21 pre-service teachers with a low or moderate level of reading habits and reading attitudes. The research was conducted through a mixed methods approach. Although both quantitative and qualitative data were collected in the study, particular emphasis was given to the data collected from the qualitative part (quan+QUAL). In line with the quantitative data, it was concluded in the study that extended involvement in the literature circles had a positive effect on the reading attitudes of the pre-service teachers. The qualitative data, which was obtained through interviews, revealed four themes. The themes emerged as love and desire for reading, benefits of reading, importance of reading and reading habits as a result of the analysis. The results obtained from the research are important in terms of contributing to the improvement of pre-service teachers who will play important roles in Turkey’s becoming a literate society.

The aim of the present study is to examine the effect level of procrastination on academic achievement. To this end, a meta-analytic approach was applied and the studies published between January 2000 and May 2020 in Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) and Academic Search Ultimate databases were included in the study. The research was limited to articles examining the correlation between the variables and, accordingly, the correlation coefficient was specified as an index to identify the effect size. After reviewing 22 relevant studies with 8307 participants, the meta-analysis was conducted through Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) software. The findings revealed that the variables were negatively correlated with each other and the overall effect size of procrastination on academic achievement was found -0.61, which can be interpreted as the medium effect size. The findings of the study endorse the main tenets of theoretical framework regarding the aforementioned link.

This study was conducted to investigate prospective teachers' spiritual well-beings and life satisfactions in terms of specified variables. 298 students from various departments of universities participated in the study. The Spiritual Well-Being Scale developed by Paloutzian and Ellison, and adapted to Turkish by Eksi and Kardas, the Life Satisfaction Scale developed by Diener et al. and translated and adapted to Turkish by Koker and a Personal Information Form prepared by the researcher were used in the study. This study was a descriptive study based on survey model. The study data were subjected to normality tests and analyzed accordingly. Mann Whitney U Test, Kruskal-Wallis H Test and Spearman Rho correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data. Results of the study, indicated that spiritual well-being levels of prospective teachers significantly varied by gender, year of study, field of study and educational status of father. Life satisfaction levels of prospective teachers significantly varied by field of study. Furthermore, there was a moderate positive correlation between total score for spiritual well-being and life satisfaction.

The aim of this study is to identify whether high school students encounter any difficulties in mathematics and reveal the reasons for such difficulties. The participants of the study, which was a descriptive case study based on qualitative understanding, were a total of 164 students, including 85 students from Anatolian High Schools and 79 students from Science High Schools. Approximately 11% of the participants said they had no difficulties in math, whereas 99% of the students from Anatolian High Schools and 78% of the students from Science High Schools said they had difficulties in mathematic. Their thoughts about the reasons for such difficulties were analyzed by content analysis method considering the type of high school they attended. The findings obtained revealed that the difficulties encountered by the participants in mathematics were teacher-, content- and student-based. Anatolian High School students stated that they intensely faced teacher-based difficulties, whereas Science High School students stated that they faced content-based difficulties. It's expected that the results of this study may contribute to studies to be conducted to increase student success in mathematics education and provide ideas for further studies.

Motivation for school is an important concept which influences students’ academic, social and cultural development. Leadership behaviours to be displayed by school principals can be thought to affect the network of social relations in school and to support the climate of trust in school for students to develop positive attitudes towards the school. In this context, this paper aims to analyse the correlations between school principals’ social justice leadership behaviours, students’ trust in school principals and motivation for school. The study group was composed of 762 secondary school students from Altindag district of Ankara. The data were collected with social justice leadership scale, trust in the school principal scale and motivation for the school scale. The data were put to descriptive analysis, correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. The findings demonstrated that students had moderate level of perceptions of school principals’ social justice leadership behaviours and trust in school principals and high level of motivation for school. Besides, significant correlations were also found between the variables. Additionally, it was found that social justice leadership predicted significantly trust in school principals and motivation for school. The findings showed that the social justice leadership behaviors of the school principal play a key role on students’ motivation and their trust in the principals.

This quantitative study aims to examine the relationships between enabling school structure, academic optimism and altruistic behaviours as well as to find out whether altruistic behaviours serve as a mediator between enabling school structure and academic optimism. A scale was applied to teachers from primary- schools in Turkey via random sampling. There were 707 teachers participating in this study. Three existing scales, which are enabling school structure, academic optimism, and teachers’ altruistic behaviours scales, were used to collect data from teachers. Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations were calculated in the study to investigate correlations among all the variables and reliabilities of the measures. Structural Equation Modelling investigated the effects of Enabling School Structure on School Academic Optimism through Teachers’ Altruistic Behaviours. The results confirmed a positive relationship between all variables of the study. The findings also revealed the mediator effect of TAB on the relationship between ESS and SAO. Finally, some recommendations were given based on results.

E-learning has become a viable mean to both Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and Small Private Open Courses (SPOCs). Research has shown that the quality and effectiveness of these types of courses depend largely on the contextual factors that may impact the design and development of online courses. This study highlights a design framework for a SPOC offered at Sultan Qaboos University. It employs a design-based research methodology, which is a systematic research approach aimed to improve instructional practices through iterative analysis, design, development, and implementation to produce contextually-sensitive design principles. The sample of this study consists of a diverse group of subjects including instructional designers, subject-matter experts, as well as students. The findings illustrate the importance of contextual logistics that need to be considered in the design and development of SPOCs. The findings also highlight the importance of the DBR as a suitable research methodology for similar developmental studies.

Today’s individuals are expected to have skills in many areas as a natural consequence of the advances that have been taking place in society and technology. Particularly in developed countries, these skills are also called 21^st century skills. Critical, creative and reflective thinking, problem solving and keeping up with the digital age (digital literacy) are some of these skills. Universities play a significant role in raising qualified individuals in our country. Updating the training programs, keeping up with the era and having a say in the digital world makes it a necessity for people who give education in these areas to be competent. From this point of view, this study aimed to explore the digital literacy levels of Turkish academics working in faculties of education and the perceptions of students towards technology integration competence of the academics. In this study, quantitative cross-sectional design was preferred. While selecting the participants, purposeful sampling method was used, and two different participant groups (academics and prospective teachers) were included in the process. Two scales with validity and reliability in the literature were used as data collection tools in the research. In the data collection process, firstly, a survey was administered to academics working in faculties of education, and then another one was conducted with prospective teachers. The results obtained were subjected to quantitative data analysis via SPSS 24 and AMOS 24 software, and descriptive and inferential statistics were generated. The results revealed that the variables of department, age and grade level created a significant difference in the digitalization of academics, whereas the gender variable significantly contributed only to the perceptions of prospective teachers.