In this study, it was aimed to describe the curriculum and instruction activities, to investigate the efficiency of these studies and to reveal the problems confronted during implementation at private schools in three major cities. The data were collected by performing semi-structured interviews with curriculum specialists (n=15) and questionnaires filled out by the participant teachers (n=72) of the curriculum development activities. The findings display that the first curriculum development departments founded nearly 10 years ago in Ankara. Designing activities or materials, organizing the in-service training, and developing the teaching projects in collaboration with teachers are common activities in these departments. 50% of the teachers expressed that these activities was effective, 63% of the teachers stated that their relations with curriculum specialists were very well. The most frequently addressed problem by the teachers was increased workload, however, the specialists mostly expressed negative attitudes of the teachers and the administrators. Moreover, the specialists asserted that, teachers in general were exhibiting reluctance, and also workload, inadequacy of time and the absence of extra payment were generating dissatisfaction. They also claimed that schools have lack of a clear vision about the curriculum development.

The basic goal of this research is to analyze the perceptions that students, teachers, and administrators have on the concept of school using metaphors. The sample of the study was 600 students, 203 teachers, and 51 school administrators who were working in different primary schools located in Bolu during the 2005-2006 academic year. The data were collected by a questionnaire. In the analysis of the data, frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, t-test and one-way analysis of variance were used. The results obtained in the research can be listed as follows: Whereas school metaphors as the place of knowledge and enlightenment, growing up and maturity, change and development, and family and team were accepted, metaphors such as a chaotic environment, prison, factory, office and shopping center were not considered. Among the views of the participants, no significant difference with respect to educational status was found even though there were differences with respect to gender, duty, and symbol seniority.

The purpose of this study is to investigate school alienation in relation to state-trait anger and socio-demographic variables (e.g., gender and socio-economic status). In this research, survey method has been used. The sample consisted of 300 female and 298 male high school students who came from different socio-economic levels. The participants' mean age is 17.6 years. To collect data a “Personal Information Form”, “the State- Trait Anger Scale” and “the Student Alienation Scale” were used. Multivariate analysis of variance was usedto determine gender, socio-economic level and state- trait anger differences on the students' alienation used as dependent variables. When there were significant multivariate effects (Wilks' Lambda criterion) separate analysis of variance (ANOVA) were conducted on each dependent variable to determine the source of the effect. The level of significance was set at p < .01. The results indicate that there is a significant difference between students' school alienation and state-trait anger.

The relationship between social support that students perceived from their friends and families and their depression and anxiety levels is investigated in this study. The study is conducted with 325 students (200 females 125 males aged between 18 and 21, mean age = 20.41) attending to different universities in the 2002-2003 academic year. Three scales were used in the study to measure perceived social support, depression and anxiety levels: the Social Support Perceived from the Family and Friends, adapted to the Turkish by Eskin, “the Beck Depression Scale” adapted to the Turkish by Tegin and “the State and Trait Anxiety Inventory” adapted to the Turkish by Öner. These three scales were administered simultaneously to the students participating in the study and the relations among them were calculated. As a result, there found to be a positive significant relationship between trait anxiety and depression scores (p<.01) and a negative relationship between social support perceived from the friends (p<.01) and family (p<.05) and depression scores.

In this article, it is explored that the issue about applicability of the Mixture Model analyses technique which can be used in the searches of education sciences. Therefore in this search, for the semester of 2005-2006, the 643 individuals participated in the Private Skill Examination of Physical and Sport Education Department, Education Faculty of Yüzüncü Yıl University (YYU). During interview, information was taken with regard to AOOBP, gender, occupation of father and mother, settlement and high school branch from which they graduated. The search data has been gathered by the structured - interview technique. During the interview, the questions about the personal features of the participants were asked and the answers were recorded. The effect level of the variables have indicated the personal features of the registered participants who had the grade of OSS (Student Selection Examination) examination. These effect levels have been solved by Mixture Model which belongs to Latent Class family. This model is a new statistical method for education sciences in Turkey. At the end of this search, 5 sub-classes have been identified and the variables have influenced each identified class from different aspects and levels. Besides, it was observed that the interaction of the variables has been an affective matter in regard of different sides and level.

The effectiveness or productivity of organizations is positively related to the performance of the organizations' employees. The results of the studies related to the inspection and evaluation process in the Turkish educational system reveal that inspector-focused evaluation systems are not objective, reliable, or functional. Therefore, in order to raise the quality of education in Turkey, there is an urgent need for a teacher evaluation system that is multiple data-driven, participatory, transparent, functional, objective, and reliable. The purpose of the present research was to fulfill this objective. Study was conducted on 261 high school students in downtown Tokat. A teacher performance evaluation scale was developed based on the 360 degree feedback model and the new scale was investigated in terms of validity and reliability. The results show that the Teacher Performance Evaluation Scale was valid and reliable in measuring high school teachers' performances.

This study is aimed at finding which factors constitute the interpretation skills of interest inventory profile scores and what kind of relationship these factors exhibit with the constructs of measuring counseling skills. Also, the intention is to analyze whether the scores change depending on various independent variables. Two studies have been conducted in relation to these aims. The sample of the study was guidance teachers (n = 892) in the first study; whereas, the undergraduate counseling and guidance (PCG) students (n = 245) have participated in the second study. The findings reveal that profile interpretation skills have a two-component structure, and the two-factors model - instead of one factor model - reflects a better fit of the database for the sampling of guidance and counseling department graduates. These two measures point out significant relationships with the measures about the school counseling skills. Also, they indicate significant differences according to the professional experience, the departments from which the participants graduate, and the class levels. In the discussion part, it was considered that another dimension -entitled as matching and interpretation- could be taken into account and some suggestions have been given.

Reforms in education can only be done if teachers who apply these reforms directly participate in the reform process. Moreover, this participation can only be possible if teachers are trained through pre-service and in-service to have a researcher identity inclined to change and development. The main purpose of this study is to investigate elementary school teachers' perceptions about research conducted in their schools. The sample of the study consists of 42 female and 36 male teachers who worked at different elementary schools. Fifty four of the teachers were classroom teachers and 24 of them were branch teachers. The Teachers' Perceptions about Scientific Research Questionnaire developed by the researcher was used to gather the data. This instrument was developed on the basis of questionnaire prepared by Everton, Galton and Pell (2002) and consists of 4 questions about teachers' personal characteristics, 5 close-ended and 14 open-ended questions about teachers' perceptions on scientific research. Percentage and frequency distributions of the data were computed for the close-ended questions and content analysis was used for the open-ended questions. Results show that 27 % of the teachers benefited from educational research. The major means of reaching the research findings were media sources such as newspapers, television, radio etc. The least used sources were in-service education courses and communication with academicians. Thirty three percent of the teachers indicated that they really benefited from educational research findings. The major problems that teachers encountered about research were: the research topics being not interesting or related to teachers' real problems; research questions being unclear and too long; a researcher with weak human relation skills; and not believing the benefits of the research topic. It is concluded that the Ministry of Education and school administrators give little importance to research findings and do not care much about practical applications of research findings. Finally, it is concluded that schools have limited opportunities for research.

This study investigated the relationship between university faculty's gender, age, academic position, and working environment with their burnout levels. In addition, the relationship between the participants' burnout levels and the use of humor as a coping strategy was investigated. 283 full-time faculty 97 of whom were female and 186 were male working at Çukurova University volunteered to participate in this study. The mean age of the participants was 38.17 (SD=9.89). The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), the Coping Humor Scale (CHS) and a Socio-demographic Data and Working Environment Evaluation Form were used to collect data in the study. Results show that female faculty experience emotional exhaustion(EE) more in comparison to male faculty (p<.0001). It was revealed that professors as a group feel emotional exhaustion and personal failure the least (EE, x: 14.14; PF, x: 12.76 ) whereas research assistants feel it the most (EE, x: 19.34; PF, x: 15.73). Faculty's use of humor as a coping strategy on their burnout levels didn't show significant differences (p>.05). Besides, a significant difference (p<.05) was found between subdimensions of burnout and several evaluation ranks, including lecturers' believes to be promoted, work guarantee, work prestige, recommending job to someone else, and administrator and colleague support.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the factors related with living with own family or living in an orphanage cause any differences by means of understanding of basic concept between first and second graders. Also, the effects of attending preschool in early years on concept knowledge for the sample group were investigated. The sample of the study consisted of 173 children (113 children living with their parents and 60 children living in an orphanage) who were residing in Istanbul. 60 (46.7%) children from orphanages attended preschool; 21.7 % did not. There was no information about 31,6 % of the children whether they attended preschool or not. On the other hand, 40.7 % of the children living with their parents did not attend preschool whereas the rest of them did. The Boehm Test of Basic Concepts (BOEHM-3) was administered to the children to assess young children's understanding of the basic relational concepts. Results indicated significant differences among the groups. Whereas the children from the higher socio-economic group had the highest scores, the children from orphanages had the lowest scores. Among these groups of children the amount of time spent in preschool affected the scores. Children attended preschools more had the highest scores. Also, second graders who were staying with their families had significantly higher scores than children who were living in institutions. However, there was not such a difference between first grade children.

The aim of the present study is to develop a self report scale measuring teachers' altruistic behaviors. 359 teachers participated in the pre-test, criterion validity and test re-test validity studies. Factor analysis, to test the structural validity, was resulted in 4 factors with 18 items. To test the criterion validity, the Altruism Scale (Akbaba, 1994) was used as an external criterion. Results showed that total scores of the two scales correlated (r = 0.60). The internal consistency of the scale is . =0,73. The Guttman split half coefficient of the scale is =0,78. Test re-test correlation of the total score is 0,88. Results revealed that the psychometric properties of the scale was sufficient.