This study investigated the influence of teachers’ classroom management on pupils’ motivation for learning and academic achievement in Kwara State. Descriptive survey design was adopted. The population was all primary teachers and pupils in Ilorin Metropolis, Kwara State. The sample size was 250 teachers and all pupils in their classrooms. One research questions and four hypotheses guided the study. The instruments used to collect data were researchers’ developed instruments titled ‘Teachers’ Classroom Management Style Observation Scale (TCMOS) and Pupils’ Motivation for Learning Rating Scale (PMLRS) with reliability coefficients of 0.82 and 0.86 respectively. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics, linear regression, t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). All hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The results showed that there was significant influence of classroom management styles on pupils motivation for learning (F_(1,248) = 121.155, p < 0.05) and their academic achievement (F_(1,248) = 28.947, p < 0.05). It was therefore recommended that teachers should be encouraged to adopt appropriate classroom management to motivate pupils to learn for improved academic achievement. Also, courses on classroom management and leadership should be integrated into the teacher training curriculum while regular retraining of in-service teachers should be encouraged.

Adversity Quotient is a person's response to overcoming obstacles or problems. Barriers experienced, and the ability to overcome these obstacles vary in each person. This study was a literature review study focusing on adversity quotient in the field of education. This study reviewed several manuscripts that concentrated on research design, type of participants, and the critical role of adversity quotient in the field of education. A total of 18 articles were analyzed by exploring and reviewing manuscripts from trusted database journals, namely Scopus, Science Direct, and ERIC. This review explored three aspects of educational adversity quotient publications, including 1) the type of research design used in research related to adversity quotient in the field of education, 2) the types of participants chosen in research related to adversity quotient, and 3) the role of adversity quotient in education. Based on the results of manuscript reviews, adversity quotient research shows a great influence in the field of education. Research on adversity quotient shows that 1) descriptive and experimental research is the most commonly used design; 2) research participants in adversity quotient research are dominated by students, especially university students; 3) the role of adversity quotient is much shown in learning outcomes in the field of skills.

Digital storytelling has undergone extensive study in different content-areas, but its naturally-combined use with collaborative writing for skills development, and reflective practice remains underresearched in pre-service EFL teacher education. This study undertook joint tech-enhanced retelling of L2 texts by 56 Turkish EFL teacher candidates, rubric-based peer and teacher assessment of final products, comparative analysis of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) between outliers, and process evaluation using the significant learning taxonomy to explore impacts on L2 writing performance, academic learning, and personal growth. Despite assigning lower scores than the teacher-assessors, especially to the top-performers, the majority of peers successfully fulfilled the job, effectively performed the future reviewer role, and positively reacted to co-construction, and technology integration. CAF and reflection analyses indicated that the biggest difference between the highest- and lowest-scoring groups lay in grammatical accuracy, and lack of mutual interaction could account for the less cooperative group’s poorer performance. The classification of their post-task responses into six kinds of learning gains (foundational knowledge, application, integration, human dimension, caring, and learning how to learn) also revealed that their collaborative digital storytelling experience (CDS) elicited more procedural, critical, creative and practical thinking on the academic learning front, while disciplinary and integrative thinking may have declined due to more immediate preoccupation with task achievement. Their critical thinking was mainly organised around consensus-reaching, fluctuating membership, and logistical challenges, and most demonstrated a clear understanding of the role of positive group dynamics in group outcomes. Despite heightened awareness of the performance-boosting, character-forming, and motivational benefits of collective scaffolding and multimodal meaning-making, a minority could also discern the instrumentality of innovative teaching techniques in their future classroom practices.

This study was designed to investigate the applicability of the IES/NSF pipeline-of-evidence protocol in ascertaining why two notable educational initiatives spearheaded and financially supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation achieved or not the goal of improved academic outcomes for K-12 public school students. Our interest was not whether there is a sufficient body of high quality research evidence to support the two initiatives but whether the research considered by the Gates Foundation established the likelihood that the initiatives would be successful and worth the decision to dedicate substantial funding, time, and effort required for each versus the many competing programs seeking sponsorship. We found that in the case of Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching, efficacy and effectiveness research were absent and the Gates foundation discontinued grant support because the initiative had not achieved the goal of improved high school graduation and college attendance among low-income minority students. In the case of Early College High School, we found empirical evidence was manifest at all but the effectiveness stage of the pipeline and the initiative continued to receive funding. Our findings support the importance of widening the net of methodologies that constitute a framework for elements needed to make predictions of effectiveness for any given intervention before investing in scale-up initiatives and the need for private foundations to be transparent in their decision-making process to enable others to scrutinize the research that informs the design of initiatives.

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.

Progress monitoring of academic achievement is an essential element to prevent learning disorders. A prominent approach is curriculum-based measurement (CBM). Various studies have documented positive effects of CBM on students’ achievement. Nevertheless, the use of CBM is associated with additional work for teachers. The use of tablets may be of help here. Yet, although many advantages of computer- or tablet-based assessments are being discussed in the literature (e. g. innovative item formats, adaptive testing, automated scoring and feedback), there are still concerns regarding the comparability of different assessment modes (paper-pencil vs. tablet). In the study presented, we analyze the CBM data of 98 fourth graders. They processed the exact same computation items once with paper and pen and once in a tablet application. The analyses point to comparable results in the test modes, although some significant deviations can be found at item level. In addition, the children report perceived benefits when working with the tablet.

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.

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.

Astronomy concept is regarded as one difficult topic in both teachers’ and students’ perspective even though it strongly appeals to the human mind. This concept requires imagination and the ability to use various skills and knowledge, for example, actual motion, relative position, and coordination of views from several points on the Earth to generate an explanation.  As mentioned in the literature, the teacher plays a vital role in the teaching and learning process. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate 45 in-service science teachers’ understanding of astronomy concepts in a professional development program and to diagnose the misconceptions regarding astronomy concepts. A two-tier test, open-ended questions, and a semi-structured interview were used to gather information on the understanding and misconceptions, particularly on celestial motion concepts. The data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results pointed out that after the four-day professional development program, in-service science teachers gained significantly higher two-tier test scores. The highest progression was in the topic of the Sun’s apparent motion. However, most in-service science teachers still held some misconceptions relating to the concept of the seasons. The obstacles in teaching astronomy were also discussed. The study’s findings lead to the improvement of the professional development program for in-service science teachers required to teach astronomy concepts nationwide.

This research aims at revealing the effects of Second Life (SL) application used in virtual environment in art and design education of creativity. This research is a qualitative study conducted evaluating the results of a group of 16 students studying art and design at universities, for a period of 12 weeks. For SL, a 3D, online, multi-user virtual environment was chosen as the study area.  The process of the research was evaluated by the researcher with a Structured Observation Form (SOF). Student designs were evaluated by four graduated artists/educators and researchers with a Rubric. The study group discovered SL during the application process. They made numerous trials, took risks and tried different solutions in SL. The design process that started with an avatar creation continued with 3D design, adding texture, colour, and script to objects and creating a notecard. According to the researcher’s feedback based on SOF, the group is considered “Good” in the design process. According to the Rubric for creativity, applied by the experts is evaluated as “Accomplished.” As for the rubric applied by the researcher, the group is evaluated “Good.” Based on these results, it can be considered that the inclusion of SL in the art and design education curriculum will contribute to 21st century skills and develop imagination and creativity of students.

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.

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.

Time management for educational leaders has remained highly relevant to scholars, policymakers and practitioners. We analyzed survey responses from 98 public high school principals to examine the congruency between average total hours they worked per week against the sum total of the average hours worked per week in each of five distinct categories of leadership tasks. The observed congruence was 0.32, while Cohen’s kappa coefficient was 0.10. Female principals tended to underreport, and male principals tended to overreport, total work time. Principals with doctorate degrees exhibited higher congruence than those without, and overreporting was inversely related to highest degree. Principals in charge of large teaching staffs were more likely than their counterparts to be congruent and less likely to overreport total work time. Self-report appears to be an inaccurate method to measure time use among high school principals. If time use is a key component of the quality of principal leadership, more detailed and robust techniques for collecting time use data should be utilized in future studies.

Contemporary studies related to teacher autonomy mostly deal with research into how autonomy is perceived by teachers and which variables it is associated with. On the other hand, there are very few studies dealing with how teachers’ instructional autonomy over the curriculum is reflected in the education process. The aim of this study is to reveal in depth the practices carried out in the context of instructional autonomy by science teachers who have different levels of autonomy. The study is based on data gathered from eight teachers employed at different schools in the province of Izmir in Turkey. Interviews, observations and documents were used for collecting the data. The results reveal that while teachers with high instructional autonomy successfully apply contemporary teaching methods, alternative evaluation techniques, high-order thinking skills and effective classroom management, teachers with low instructional autonomy fall short in all of these areas.

The aim of this study is to examine the motivation levels and future expectations of preservice teachers studying in Mathematics and Science Teaching Departments comparatively. The population of study consisted of preservice teachers studying at Mathematics and Science Teaching Departments at Education Faculties of Mehmet Akif Ersoy University and Akdeniz University. The sample consisted of 470 preservice teachers. In research, the correlational survey model was used. Research data were collected with "Adult Motivation Scale" and "Future Expectations Scale". In data analyzing, statistics package program was used. Accordingly, t-test was used for variables with two categories and One Factor Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used for more than two categories. Sheffe multiple comparison test was used if it was significant. Pearson Correlation was used to determine whether there is a significant relationship between preservice teachers' motivation levels and future expectations. According to analysis results, motivation levels of preservice teachers were found to be high. Likewise, it was concluded that preservice teachers' expectations for future were highly positive. In preservice teachers' motivation levels and expectations for future, gender, major, type of high school they graduated and major satisfaction they study were found to be effective.

In this study in which case study – one of the qualitative research methods - was used, it was aimed to assess the effects of covid-19 pandemic on preschool education by teachers. Preschool teachers working in 14 provinces where the number of cases is high form the universe of the study. Sample group is 140 teachers in total. So as to get data for the study, survey questions prepared by the researcher and submitted to expert opinion and structured interview forms were used. The findings of the study are as follows: preschool children had feelings of anxiety, fear and longing all together during this process and they wanted to return to their schools as soon as possible. Similarly, most of the teachers were highly concerned and worried. The teachers attended online educations related to their professional development during the process of staying home. Before Covid-19 came to Turkey, the schools did not take any measures; then, when distance education started, all schools were disinfected, the materials and toys in the classrooms were put aside after disinfection. Distance education process was quite difficult in preschool education; all the teachers taught in line with their own initiatives. During this process, while the activities most preferred by the teachers were games and art activities, the activities having pandemic theme were experiments and dramas about hygiene. Distance education increased parent participation to preschool education and this had a positive effect on parent-child interaction. In the distance education process, by establishing platforms intended for preschools, suggestions to make more and professional activities, to have common actions in cooperation with schools and to train parents were made.